But they kept their farms.
And Farmers & Merchants survived.
Every year after that, at Christmas, our porch was covered with gifts. Hams and pies and jars of honey and handmade quilts. From farmers who’d kept their land because George Whitaker wouldn’t call in their loans. Nobody ever signed a card. They didn’t have to.
George died in 2017.
Heart failure. He was seventy-two. He went in his sleep, in our bed, in the yellow house on Elm Street that we almost lost in 1985.
Two years before that, in 2015, something happened that broke his heart.
Small banks were dying. All over the country. The regulations got so complicated and so expensive that little banks like ours couldn’t keep up. We needed compliance officers and computer systems and lawyers. We couldn’t afford them.
George got an offer from Heartland Bancorp. A big regional bank in Des Moines. They wanted to buy Farmers & Merchants.
