The Feb. 4, 2015 issue of Credit Union Times, both in Sarah Cooke's editorial and a letter from Tom O'Shea she quoted, echoed themes we heard in the early 1980s: We're too constrained, we can't grow the way we want, we need broader powers.

Such issues under the administration of the late Edgar Callahan some 30 years ago led to the power to add SEGs, select employee groups which had no obvious common bond with an established credit union, but had their own common bond.  This led, of course, to the addition of hundreds of SEGs by ambitious, expansion-minded credit unions.  The core rationale, for which Callahan argued, was that in the face of economic contraction, mergers, and the disappearance of many companies which had served as the sponsors of credit unions, diversification of the membership base was required for the survival of hundreds of credit unions.

And it worked.  A struggling airline credit union, for example, could add the employees of, say, a chain of hair salons.  That credit union could survive and grow.  And the credit union movement as a whole grew.  True, there were and are fewer and fewer institutions – down from about 20,000 in 1980 to less than 7,000 today.  But membership in credit unions grew to more than 100 million today.  (Does anyone remember CUNA's Operation Moonshot in the early 90s that proclaimed that goal?  Well, 20 years later, we're here.  Finally.)