Though my
professional interest in the history and organizational dynamics of
credit unions developed later in my life, my first awareness of the
existence of the cooperative institutions was the result of my paternal grandfather,
Roy Cropp. A high school guidance counselor by profession, Roy spent
several decades as the part-time manager of the Lawrence Educators
Credit Union of Lawrence, Kansas, and his going out to work in the
office several nights a week was a consistent element of my father's
childhood. Since becoming interested in credit union history, I've
been meaning to sit down with my grandfather and discuss his
experience as a credit unionist, and my recent trip to Kansas
presented just that opportunity.
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| Roy and Matt at the entrance of the original LECU |
As with many credit
union people of his generation, Roy Cropp became involved in the
movement through his work. Having grown up on a Kansas farm during
the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, he began his career at Lawrence High
School in 1954 teaching vocational agricultural technology while
simultaneously working on his masters degree in guidance and counselling. He was offered a job as a guidance counselor at LHS when
he finished his degree in 1957, and he continued in that post
until his retirement in 1990.
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| The office was on the second floor |
A few years later,
the Lawrence Educators Credit Union was founded to promote thrift and
make credit available to the teachers of Lawrence's school system. The district provided the credit union with some
office space on the second floor of the administrative building
adjacent to LHS, and members would stop by to conduct their business
from 4-6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.
After five years of
service to the credit union, its first manager retired, and the
board approached Roy to ask if he'd take over. He agreed, but later
recalled to me that he often regretted the decision during the first two years of
his tenure. The previous manager had left the organization mired in
debt, and Roy's first major challenge was getting the LECU back in
the black. With some careful financial management, he was able to retire
the debts within a few years, and he pledged to never again have the credit union
borrow money. That conservative position sometimes put him at odds
with the central credit union, which encouraged institutions with
more loan demand than deposits to borrow to make up the difference,
but Roy held firm and the LECU only lent from deposits for the whole
of Roy's time as manager.
