During his tenure, Burniske increased the credit union's assets from $139 million to its current asset size of more than $2 billion. He also established the cooperative's philanthropic initiatives from $0 in 1987 to more than $7 million through the credit union's national, award-winning charitable arm, the We Promise Foundation.

Recently, Burniske shared his candid thoughts about the precarious future of credit unions, some advice for young CEOs and what the movement needs to do in order to survive.

As for his retirement years, you won't believe what Burniske has planned. Let's just say he won't be watching time slip by on a rocking chair.

How did you know it was time to retire?

I'm a big believer that you only go around once in life and that life is really short. Two years ago, I had no intention of leaving, and then I realized two-thirds of my life is already gone. I spent one-third growing up and going to college, and then one-third working.

It was really fun coming to work. But I always said, whenever I got out of bed and felt that I didn't want to go to work, then it's time for me to retire. The environment has changed, the regulations have changed, how we do business has changed, and how we can't do business anymore has changed. It lost a little bit of that fun and that zip, and that also contributed to my decision to retire.

What are your parting words of wisdom to young CEOs?

Good luck!

I don't know what the future holds for credit unions. When I came into the industry, there were 23,000 credit unions, and now there are less than 6,000 credit unions. I'm afraid that only the big credit unions will survive. And that is not what credit unions are about. The small ones have as much of an impact as the big ones do, but the small ones are getting beat up.

I know the Bank Secrecy Act and all of that other stuff is important. We spend $2 million to $3 million a year on implementing the BSA, and small credit unions can't afford to pay that anymore. I think for the credit union industry to survive, there has to be a balance between the big credit unions, the midsize credit unions and the small credit unions, because we all do something different. But two thirds of the industry is going away. It doesn't appear that we are headed in the right direction to survive as an industry, and that's scary.

I think a lot of the outside forces that we have to deal with every day have lost sight of what credit unions are all about, and thinking that we are more like financial institutions. And I think that will lead us to where we don't want to be.

If I were to give one piece of advice to young CEOs, I would say this: I know you have to run the business, but I would spend an awful lot of time making sure you have the right people in your credit union who know what we do, and that the people who represent us really understand what we need to be to be successful.

Everyone says we can't go back and live in the past, and I agree with that. But you could always use the past to guide you in the future. I think if we can carry forward what we've done in the past in terms of our mission as a credit union industry, we will have a chance of surviving.

How did you break into the credit union industry and what made you stay in it?

A friend of mine, whom I went to college with, was a controller at GE Credit Union in Pittsfield, Mass. He just left there to work at a community bank, and he called me up, told me that he just left and thought the controller's position would be a good job for me.

I was working for a bank at the time, and I didn't even know what a credit union was. When I took the job as controller vice president at GE Credit Union, it was refreshing.

In 1984, I became the chief financial officer at Chartway, and it was even better when I got here. I'm probably one of the very few Democrats here in this Republican-rich Virginia Beach city, but it was all about socially helping the individuals who were denied credit. The board really carried that to the nth degree. I thought that was something kind of neat, and it changed my mind about what I wanted to do in my career.

Originally, when I was at GECU, I was trying to get on Wall Street and work Wall Street for a while. I'm really glad I didn't go down that path.

What accomplishments are you most proud of?

We started the We Promise Foundation in 1999, and in that first year, we raised about $8,000. Last year, we raised more than $1 million. The foundation is dedicated to putting smiles on the faces of children with life-threatening diseases. So many things in life are material and can be taken away from you. But once you experience an event with one of these kids, that memory is yours forever. And no one can take that away from you. We touched almost 600 kids. The foundation really just culturally changed our organization. There are things we do every day that are really important to us, and our involvement in the community and helping people who are less fortunate than us is a big part of that.

I'm also proud of the relationships I have built here. Most of the people who work for me – my CFO, my HR person, my strategy person, my operations guy – all have been here for years. I think I am proud to have seen these people grow with me in terms of running the business.

The credit union was about $100 million when I took over as CEO with three branches, and about 95% of the members were either in the military or civil service. Now we are $2 billion in assets. We're in eight different states and we have diversified our membership. Our military and civil service members now make up fewer than 12% of the membership.

What are your plans during your retirement years?

I guess that's another thing that kind of convinced me it was time to retire – when my bucket list got longer than my life expectancy. I want to do a lot of traveling with my wife. We plan to travel to Dublin in May and Athens in September, and go to Vietnam next year.

A lot of my friends go to Vietnam to surf and they say it's like Hawaii was 20 years ago – beautiful beaches, beautiful water, great waves and really nice people.

I am a huge bicycle rider, so when I get back from Vietnam, I am going to ride cross-country. I'll leave Portland Ore. and I'll ride to Portland, Maine. It's 4,000 miles and it should take me about 60 days to ride. I'm really excited about doing that. It's one great way to see the country.

After I do the tour across America, I want to do the Tour de France. Right after the Tour De France, they have a group that rides the same route, which is 2,100 miles.

I would also love to hike the seven great peaks [the seven summits].

I've got 30 years left, so I'm going to let it rip.