The bank that celebrates a century this year opened at 48th Street and Prescott Avenue on Feb. 28, 1917, but no one at the bank today knows for sure why Farmer's State Bank changed its name.
But in 1935, it did.
Two decades later, Union Bank moved a few blocks north before being purchased by a Lincoln family named Dunlap in 1965.
And someone who is at the bank today -- CEO Angie Muhleisen -- does know a lot about that.
“A lawyer contacted our family and told us there was a kiting scheme at Union Bank and they were worried it was going to go under if we didn’t buy it,†she said.
“And we bought it.â€
At the time, her father, Jay Dunlap, helped run a small bank in Milford with his brother -- the second generation of Dunlaps in the banking business.
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When Angie Dunlap, who married Dan Muhleisen after her junior year of college, was in high school, she began doing her part to carry on the tradition, working summers at Union Bank & Trust Co.’s first two branches -- at 22nd and Nebraska 2 and at 48th Street and Normal Boulevard -- in the mid-1970s.
“My favorite thing was being a teller,†she says. “You get to talk to people all day. It’s fast-paced and you have a little bit of pressure on you.â€
She became CEO in 2003.
Muhleisen attributes the bank’s people-first, community-minded philosophy to her father, who still visits the bank nearly every day.
“The way we’ve been successful is the culture we have,†she said. “We care about each other, we care about the customer and we care about the community.â€
It’s something they talk about often, she says.
The bank’s first vice president of marketing agrees.
“Angie certainly has high expectations as far as putting the customer first,†said Kevin Keller. “But as an employee, one of the values of working here, is although you work hard, employees are urged to not make work their primary purpose.â€
And that seems to foster commitment.
“Faith, family, friends, work, in that order,†Muhleisen said. “It doesn’t mean work isn’t important, but when you have values like that, employees work harder for you.â€
The bank is a careful steward of its customers’ money, she said, but it also considers itself entrepreneurial, for a bank.
Making calculated risks, she says, with quality as its first priority.
She gives an example.
“Back in the '80s, no one would touch an ag loan and we went and hired a number of people and opened an ag division. It was a nice part of our business and it still is.â€
When the Dunlap family bought the bank (no kiting scheme was ever uncovered), Union Bank had 26 employees and $10.6 million in bank assets. Today, it has 36 locations in Nebraska (16 branches in Lincoln) and Kansas; 800 employees and $3.6 billion in bank assets, and more than $20 billion in combined bank and trust assets.
“We just kept growing,†said Muhleisen. “You never even imagine your business could grow to the size it is.â€
The bank’s newest location is on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, and while its headquarters is now near 70th Street and Pioneers Boulevard in southeast Lincoln, the bank at 48th and Calvert streets is still operating.
Union Bank will spend 2017 celebrating its 100 years in business.
“It’s nice to look back," Keller said, “But our theme is The Next 100 and we will be celebrating that with a number of different events.â€
There will be big parties -- like a community celebration at Union Plaza in August. (Union Bank was the lead contributor to the campaign to create the sprawling, inner city park along Antelope Creek north of O Street.)
And smaller gestures, too, like sharing special gifts with the 30-plus bank customers who are 100 or older.
Bank employees will share in the centennial celebration, too, with gifts from a “prize vault†throughout the year.
“There will be three community gifts announced in March and August,†Keller said. “Our hope is those will be catalysts for others to donate to those causes.â€
Leadership giving, Muhleisen calls it.
“We don’t do it because we have to. We love doing it. The community has made us successful. Why wouldn’t we give back?â€