One of my mother's best friends worked for Hamilton National Bank in the old building on Gay at Clinch and later for UAB. She told Mom that the office morale skyrocketed when Jake took over the bank. She remembered how all her friends just gushed over him whenever he visited. All her fellow 'little people' were charmed by him.

She lost all of her retirement savings when the whole thing crashed.

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Lucky us, we were moving to Florida in February, 1983. It wouldn't have mattered, we did not bank with UAB and had no savings even if we did bank with them. We banked with Park and Bk of Maryville. I don't even remember knowing anyone who lost their money at UAB. It could be most everyone we knew at the time had no savings.

I was on the air that morning that Jake's bank crashed and it was WIVK reporter Dan Bell who went through the HQ drive-in window to get some comment since the bank itself was not open that early. As I recall, the teller at the window learned from him that the bank had failed. I also think it was Valentine's Day. Most of the major losses were to investors with CH's outfit, Southern Industrial Banking Corp. No FDIC protection there. Interest rates were multiples of those at FDIC insured institutions and while I'm very sorry for people who didn't pay attention to the danger and lost houses and life savings, it seems to me foolhardy to believe there's something for nothing. However, we've seen that happen a lot lately, haven't we?

I worked for the old Bank of Knoxville at the time of the SIBC collapse. I well remember an older couple withdrawing their life savings (about $30,000) from our bank and taking it to SIBC shortly before the collapse. Nothing that I said could deter them. SIBC was offering ridiculously high rates. I told this couple that perhaps they should wonder why the bank was willing to offer such high rates; why were they so desperate for depositors. I reminded them that SIBC was not a bank and was not federally insured. I almost had the husband convinced but the wife felt that SIBC was secure since they had been in business for so long. A few weeks after the collapse they came to me and told me they wished they had listened to me. I felt so bad for them and knew that there were many other folks just like them.

did it snow the day the banks fell?

It might have... My strongest memory was going down to a neighbor's house to watch TV and every other commercial was for Southern Industrial Banking Corporation. That is not an exaggeration. That jingle still plays in my head. 2 days later SIBC failed. A few months later that house got foreclosed on as my friends' landlord was in with the Butchers.

I had a mortgage with Knox Federal at the time which got sold off to Charter Federal after Knox federal failed, then I think Charter Federal failed and it got shuffled to another bank or 2 before it got paid off. A lot of seemingly unrelated S&Ls got sucked into the UAB demise.

I remember thinking after the Worlds Fair "I owe more on this loan than the house is worth" but never once considered walking away from the house. Now it brings in more income in 2 years than that entire loan balance. Witness the power of inflation. Or gentrification. Or gentiflation, I suppose.

My neighbors' house is now a 5 story condo. For better or worse. Mostly worse. I wonder how many of the condos will be foreclosed on.

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"Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse."

I was a loan officer at the Clinch Avenue branch of SIBC around 1979-80, which would have made me maybe 21 or 22 years old.

I recall writing many small loans that were "secured" by household goods. I typed long lists itemizing the lamps, rugs, and bedspreads (!) that were to serve as collateral, then obtained the borrowers' signatures on a separate affadavit I was instructed to attach to the lists. Since the credit was easy, the rates were high--24% and sometimes higher.

I also wrote loans for the customers of several door-to-door sales companies (of the Stanley and Fuller Brush sort), whose merchandise was outrageously overpriced. One of those companies was Towncraft Cookware, whose cookware sets sold for $1000 and $1500, even that long ago. Somehow, Towncraft's slick salesmen reeled in customers for wares this pricey AND persuaded those customers to finance their purchases at rates like the aforementioned!

David Payne and David Crabtree, two principals in the company, dropped by the Clinch Avenue branch fairly often. I moved to California in 1982, but I read in the newspaper out there that both went to prison following the collapse. By that time, I was very happily employed with a top-rated, federally insured credit union. Whew...

You were a tool of The Man. Did you ever feel guilty? Did they ever reposess those bedspreads?

It would be nice to see that type of predatory lending be outlawed.

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"Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse."