Ben Love: My Life in Texas Commerce

Foreword

foreword James A. Baker, III * Ben Love represents everything that is good about America. He started life with little more than a bright, inquisitive mind, a healthy frame that eventually stretched to six feet four, and parents who cherished probity and education . Yet, through hard work, attention to detail, and unwavering optimism, he became an influential banker and a civic pillar who shaped his industry and his community like few others. Ben epitomizes the men and women portrayed in Tom Brokaw’s book,The Greatest Generation. Tempered by adversity during the Great Depression and World War II, motivated by the rewards our nation’s system has to offer, Ben and countless other Americans of his era answered Franklin Roosevelt’s challenge to make “a rendezvous with destiny.” In his book, Brokaw referred to people just like Ben when he wrote, “The young Americans of this time constituted a generation birthmarked for greatness, a generation of Americans that would take its place in American history with the generations that had converted the North American wilderness into the United States and infused the new nation with self-determination embodied first in the Declaration of Independence and then in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” Brokaw’s analysis squarely fits the story of Ben Love. Like so many of his era, Ben’s life was shattered when the stock market crashed in 1929. His father’s cotton brokerage business crumbled, as did his family’s comfortable middle-class existence in North Texas. When Ben was eight years old, the Loves moved to a ramshackle family farmhouse in East Texas. His parents toiled long hours to scratch out a meager existence. But they wanted more for their son and were determined that he get a good education—even if this meant that his mother sell her engagement ring to buy the horse that carried him twelve miles round-trip to school in Paris, Texas. Ben’s dedication to his books paid off when he won a college scholarship in debate. Ben carried the Depression-era lessons he learned throughout his life. Existence is tenuous. Tough times are but another Black Friday away. Hard work can overcome hard knocks. A man’s word should be as good as a government *U.S. secretary of state, U.S. secretary of the treasury, and White House chief of staff for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. bond. Those lessons were reinforced during World War II, when he joined the Air Force during his sophomore year at the University of Texas. Smart and able, Ben was quickly promoted to a lead navigator for the Eighth Air Force, flying twenty-five combat missions over Hitler’s Europe and earning eleven decorations. He saw firsthand the devastation of war. Friends died. He also gained the organizational skills that would serve him so well later in the private sector. Combat aboard a B-17 flying in one-thousand-bomber formations depended on precise planning. He did not forget that when he later entered the business world. After the war, Ben returned to the University of Texas, worked hard, earned a bachelor’s degree in business, and married his sweetheart, Margaret McKean. Now he was ready to take the next step—finding a place where more hard work would reward his pocketbook. As Ben writes, he “had become infatuated with Houston as a heady place of promise where, if you worked, you had some chance for material success. Houston was inclusive. There was energy here. Those businessmen were progressive and positive. They weren’t jealous of each other.” Houston was Emerald City for Ben. Ben Love’s business career in Houston is nothing short of remarkable. He started a successful company that revolutionized the packaging of gift wrapping paper. But the movers and shakers in Houston believed that the capable Ben Love could clear a higher bar. A sixteen-month stint as president of River Oaks Bank & Trust Company ended when he was forty-two, and Ben was named senior vice president of Texas National Bank of Commerce. In short order, he was promoted to president of Texas Commerce Bank, and by 1972, he was CEO of Texas Commerce Bancshares. Under his direction, the bank experienced rapid growth and expansion. During one stretch, the bank enjoyed sixty-five quarters of year-over-year earnings increases. During his administration, Texas Commerce grew from one bank to seventy-three member banks in twenty-eight Texas communities. Ben’s account of those...