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From adding machines to cell phones, banker retires after 55 years
McCOOK, Neb. — When Ken Foster, 85, first started in the banking business, adding machines were operated with a lever. Things have changed a little since then.
“Who would have thought you can now take picture of a check with your phone to deposit it?” Foster mused, who is retiring from First Central Bank, his second retirement, after 55 total years in banking.
He’ll be an hard act to follow, said Don Moore, First Central Bank president. “His knowledge and first-hand experience will be hard to replace,” Moore said. “It’s something you don’t find every day.”
Foster first retired in 2000 from First National Bank, when it was purchased by Wells Fargo, where he started in 1963 as an assistant cashier/installment loan officer. At the time, he was a math and biology teacher at McCook Senior High and also coached football, basketball and track. He was one of three teachers recruited at the time by then-bank president, Harold Larmon.
Foster remembers telling him, “I’ll try it for a week,” with Larmon replying, “It doesn’t work that way, kid.”
The teacher’s lack of banking background didn’t concern Larmon, Foster recalled. “He said he wanted to train us himself,” he said.
It must have been good training, as by the time Foster retired, he was chairman of the board/executive vice president at the bank. Looking back, “It was a great decision to change careers and to have had the opportunity to enter into the banking profession,” he said.
Foster grew up on a ranch in Dundy County, Neb., during the Great Depression, one of five children. He graduated from Stratton High School in 1952 and after graduating from McCook Junior College (now McCook Community College, where he met his wife, Marlene), he graduated from Hastings College and taught at Madison, Neb. He then came to McCook to teach and coach. The football team he coached in 1960 will be inducted into the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame in 2020 as the “The Golden Anniversary Team.”
After his first retirement, he was lured back into banking by Moore at First Central, whom Foster had hired at First National as an agricultural lender. Foster decided to take him up on the offer, as “I missed banking,” he said. “I don’t have any woodworking hobbies and I wasn’t getting any better at golf.”
Although technology had gained a considerable foothold in business by then, Foster said he was able to adjust. “There was always someone around here to bail me out when the computer froze,” he said.
Changes through the years in banking included continuous new regulations that meant “mountains of documents to retain in a ‘paper-less’ society,” Foster said. Lines of credit have grown dramatically from when he first started in the 1960s, he added, from $100,000 to $150,000, to millions of dollars nowadays.
“The cost of large equipment and operating expenses is huge for our agricultural customers,” he said.
He’s seen the ups and downs of banking through the years, including the 1980s when the agricultural industry was especially hard hit. “It was a tough time, hard on banks and hard on farmers,” Foster said.
Foster belonged to numerous organizations through the years, both state and local, including board director of the Nebraska State Chamber of Commerce and Industry and president of the McCook Chamber of Commerce, He was also at one time South Platte United Chamber of Commerce president, and a member of the Mid-Plains Community College Board of Governors. Awards he’s received include McCook Junior Chamber of Commerce “Distinguished Service Award,” McCook Chamber of Commerce Heritage Days Honor Family Award in 2008, the “50-Year Banker Award” at NBA convention in 2014, and McCook Area Chamber of Commerce “Community Builder Award” in 2019.
He was also involved with economic development in the community, helping in the recruitment process that brought Electric Hose & Rubber (now Parker Hannifin) and Valmont Industries to McCook.
Foster said this time around, retirement doesn’t include any big plans, other than to visit his children and grandkids with Marlene and keep up on his yard. “I’m not a world traveler,” he admitted.
Still, if he decides to “un-retire” a third time, Foster’s office will be waiting for him: Moore told him he’d keep his office open for him for the next five years in case he wanted to come back.
And even after 55 years in the business, his view on finances still remains simple. “Stay thrifty, be a saver and be honest,” he advised. “And practice the Golden Rule: treat others as you want to be treated.”
He and his wife have three children, Kristi and husband, Greg Johnson of Des Moines, Iowa, Deanna and husband, Greg Donohue of Evergreen, Colo., and Todd and Dawn Foster of McCook; six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.