Growing from the Home Office

In 1951, my parents, William and Catherine Miller, started a credit union in our home. It was an educational CU which served the school employees of about seven communities in our county. For a number of years it operated out of a metal cashbox on our kitchen table. The books were kept on paper in ink. Members had passbooks. In a few years one of the local high schools had a disaster in which a leaky roof caused a brand new gym floor to be torn up and thrown away. My father and I borrowed a small truck and salvaged all the wood we could. It was used to panel the walls of our basement which became the credit union office. My mother refinished the wood by hand.

People of all races, religions, and backgrounds came to our home and either sat at the kitchen table or went down to the basement to make deposits and get small loans and advice from my parents who at the time were both volunteers just like the board, the supervisory committee and the credit committee. The examiners came in and sealed the records safe with their blue stickers so the records could not be altered during the exam. They worked for the Bureau of Federal Credit Unions, which I think was somewhere in the Department of Agriculture.