July 17, 2020 – West Bend, WI – Mary Gumm is a familiar face at First Citizens Bank, formerly Guaranty Bank, in West Bend.
Pleasant, helpful, and now after more than 45 years in the industry Gumm is retiring.
“It was 1974 and I was a senior in high school when I started at the bank,” said Gumm.
Sitting behind her desk in her corner office, drive-thru traffic passing by her window, Gumm recalled the day her counselor, Orv Sommers, walked into homeroom. “He said does anybody need a job and I raised my hand and said I do and he said, ‘Come with me.’”
“I sat in his office and he said, ‘You need to be at Guaranty Bank right after school for an interview for a teller. Go home, get dressed up and go to the bank.’”
“I walked into the branch on S. Main Street and talked to Dave Ponath. He asked me a couple questions including when could I start and he told me to come back tomorrow, I would work 4 p.m. – 8 p.m. Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
“We only had savings accounts at that time; we didn’t have checking,” said Gumm.
“My friends were flipping burgers at McDonald’s and I had this job and I loved it. I was making, I think $4 an hour. Originally I wanted to be a teacher but I loved working with numbers.”
Nine months later Gumm’s dream job came to an end. “Mr. Ponath called me into his office and said he was going to have to let me go because we were closing on Mondays and Thursdays,” said Gumm.
“I was heartbroken and I went into the back in the kitchen area and I was just crying,” she said. “I remember Nanci Rauch came and asked me why I was sobbing and I said I was being let go because there wasn’t enough work for me. She grabbed my hand and said, ‘You’re not leaving.’”
The two marched into the manager’s office and Rauch laid it on the line. “She said she wasn’t going to tell anybody she was pregnant but she told Dave and said she wasn’t going to come back and then he called me in and said, ‘Never mind; forget what I told you. As soon as you’re out of school you’re going to be full time.”
“To this day if it wasn’t for her… I wouldn’t be here,” Gumm said.
Through the years Gumm has worn just about every hat from teller to accounting to almost a manager while she was still in her teens.
“I remember when they moved me to the Richfield branch which was next to the hardware store on the east side of Highway 175 in the strip mall,” she said. “There used to be a pharmacy in back and now the Piggly Wiggly is there.”
“They wanted to make me a manager but I was only 19 years old and you had to be 21; so, I was a head teller,” she said.
Soon Gumm was back in the West Bend office. “I did the mortgage processing. It involved legal descriptions and I did it all on an electric typewriter. It was an IBM Selectric with the little ball and a bottle of whiteout at my side.” Gumm laughs at the memories.
From there Gumm operated out of a branch at Northridge in Milwaukee where she worked in the personal loan department. In 1984, following the birth of her second daughter, Gumm returned to West Bend.
The biggest change Gumm has seen over the years has been the focus on sales in banking.
Asked if she would miss it, Gumm said she would miss the interaction with the people.
While there have been a lot of changes within the building, Gumm said the past four decades have also brought a lot of change to S. Main Street as well.
“Kohls food store use to be on the corner by Decorah and there was a pharmacy. I think the two stores were connected at one time…,” she said. “Ben Franklin was here, the JC Penny, the sewing store and Alston’s; it was a women’s clothing store. They were located here in the West Bend Plaza strip mall and in Cedarburg.”
Gumm remembers the Sentry grocery across the street along with Kuhn’s Liquor in the Decorah Shopping Center and when the Greyhound Bus pulled in for pickup at George Webbs. “People always used to sit along that side of the building,” said Gumm pointing to the south side of Webbs. “There was also Toy World which is where Main Street Café is.”
Gumm also remembers when the bank was built. “When this place was being built, the Domino’s building to the south was Burger Hut and we went in there temporarily,” she said. “This was 1973 and I started in 1974.”
One of the memorable lessons Gumm learned in banking came from her dad. “He would take $100 from me each month and tuck it aside,” she said. “That is how I learned to save. He said, if you don’t have it you won’t spend it.”
Gumm will wrap up her career at the end of July. “It’s a good time because I have my health and I will be able to spend more time with my grandkids,” she said.
