Chuck Painter to retire after 32 years at Raccoon Valley Bank

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Raccoon Valley Bank Senior Vice President Chuck Painter will put in his last workday Tuesday, retiring after 32 years as the community bank’s consumer and residential real estate loan officer.

His fellow employees and a steady stream of well wishers gathered Thursday afternoon in the bank’s lobby to wish Chuck well at a retirement party, showering him with cards and gifts, including a golf bag sporting the University of Iowa colors.

Painter started working April 7, 1986, at what was then the Perry State Bank. Dwayne Hochhalter, then the bank’s executive vice president, hired the 31-year-old Painter, and the bank’s president was then Mel Shanda. The Perry State and Raccoon Valley banks merged in 2003.

The bank in Perry was not Painter’s first job. He followed his 1972 graduation from Ottumwa High School with four years in the U.S. Navy. While stationed in Hawaii, Painter tried his hand at deep-sea sport fishing and once landed a 745-pound blue marlin off the coast of Oahu.

Following his military service, Painter turned to college work, earning an associate’s degree from Ottumwa Heights College and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Iowa Wesleyan University.

At Ottumwa Heights College, he met and married Laura Painter, today his wife of 40 years.

“The day I graduated from college, my son turned 1,” Chuck Painter said. “I was just so fortunate how things worked out.”

He and Laura have one son and one daughter in the Perry area, and their three grandchildren are apt to keep them from relocating for the time being, he said.

Painter’s first banking job after college was at the First National Bank of Ottumwa, which was owned by Norwest, better known today as Wells Fargo. Looking back, he said, he was lucky to get on with the Raccoon Valley Bank.

“This has been a great bank to work at with the Garst family as owners,” Painter said. “When I left Norwest, they were starting to become centralized and starting to make decisions elsewhere. When I came here — and it still remains this way — we were able to make local decisions. We make decisions on loans right here, not somewhere else. Norwest and those places don’t do that.”

Along with local decision making, Painter said he has appreciated Raccoon Valley’s commitment to the local community.

“I’ve witnessed several times how they want to be involved in the community and are more interested in that than in the almighty dollar,” he said.

Painter recalled attending one of his first board meetings at the Perry State Bank with John Chrystal, then chairman and chief executive officer of Bankers Trust Inc., a power in Iowa banking and at one time as intimate an acquaintance of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as his uncle, the great Roswell Garst of Coon Rapids, had himself been.

“He was on our board,” Painter said. “Back then they were trying to limit consumer loans to a minimum of $2,000 because supposedly you don’t make any money on loans less than that. And John Chrystal made a statement. He said, ‘No, that’s not what we are. We’re a community bank to help people. If somebody needs $100 and they’re credit worthy, we’re going to loan it to them, because down the road when they need more, they’ll come here.’ That thought and that idea was what really sold me on the bank.”

He said the same community-centered philosophy of lending has prevailed under the new owners.

“I’ve heard Liz Garst state things at board meetings that tell me she’s thinking of people more than the dollar,” Painter said. “That’s a blessing that I’ve had being able to work at a bank like that throughout my career and put people first. I can honestly say that I’ve never made a loan just to be making a loan. I’ve tried to make it so it’s a win-win for everybody. I’ve never made a loan just to make money off it. I’ve always got paid whether I did it or not.”

Painter seemed especially proud that the Raccoon Valley Bank was able to weather the 2008 collapse of the U.S. housing market without a single foreclosure because “we were able to work with people,” he said. Will local control and people-first lending continue to be the way at the Raccoon Valley Bank?

“I hope so,” Painter said, not without a shadow of doubt in his voice. “I hope so. Times change. We’re still a community bank.”

Raccoon Valley Bank President and CEO Terry Nielsen spoke of Painter in the highest terms.

“We wish him well,” Nielsen said. “They broke the mold when they made Chuck.” He said Painter helped train his own replacement, and the process promises a “good transition,” though the “new person certainly won’t be a Chuck.”

Laura Painter retired last year after 25 years in the Perry Community School District, and soon she and Chuck will both be free to plan their days at leisure.

“We’re planning a fall trip,” Chuck said. “It’s going to be so nice to go on a trip without having to drive 15-hour days to get there and get back. We’ll just take our time with no real constraints. We want to go east.”

Some things will change with retirement and some will not, he said.

“I’ll continue as Santa Claus” at a local retail store, he said, a tradition almost as long as his tenure at the bank. “I might even try it with a real beard this year.”