BANK NOTES: A column about Bradford banks in general and
Producers Bank in particular has sparked some interesting
feedback:

John McCoy writes, “I must have been an adolescent by the time
they razed the old Bradford National Bank, but my memories of it
are of visiting the bank as a pre-schooler accompanying my mother
on downtown shopping trips.”

“Through the eyes of a child, it was an impressive sight. It was
in the classic American bank style with a lot of marble, cashier
grills above a high marble counter and a pistol-packing uniformed
guard wandering the lobby.

“The most interesting thing about Bradford bank history is that
one of the banks (I assume Bradford National or Citizens) was
established in the 1930s by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
(FDIC), the U.S. government agency established early in FDR’s New
Deal to insure bank deposits.

“This was a rare enough occurrence during the FDIC’s first three
decades that, when I was in college in the late ’60’s, one of my
textbooks had a footnote listing Bradford and the other two
communities in which the FDIC had established banks.

“Apparently, after a Bradford bank failed leaving Producers as
the city’s only bank, it was determined that a single bank wouldn’t
be in the public interest, so the FDIC established a new bank.

“My late aunt, Helen Lesser Higie, who would have been in her
mid-20’s, had been an employee of the failed bank and was hired to
work with FDIC officials who were overseeing the formation of the
new bank and insurance payments to depositors.

“When the work was completed, she accepted employment with the
FDIC and worked in its national office in Washington and (during
WWII) Chicago, until returning to Bradford in the late 1940s to
care for an elderly relative.”

Bill Branch who now lives in Williamsburg, Va., sends along a
thank you for the mention of Producers Bank and its history. He
adds, “FYI ‘Citizens National,’ which was located where Northwest
Savings is now, was merged into Bradford National which later was
named First Laurel, Integra and Pennbank which then merged into
National City Bank.”

Bill Jr., as many will recall, was the president of Producers
Bank, following in the footsteps of his father, Bill Sr., who had
held the same position for many years.

More on this subject at a later date.