Danville bank employee retires after 42 years: 'I love helping people'

Marsha Lyons started working as a teller at the Commercial and Savings Bank in Danville in 1979.

"Two of my uncles were bank managers," Lyons told the Mount Vernon News. "I had two children, had not worked in a couple of years and was ready to go back to work. The manager asked me to come in. I had a job the next day."

There was very little technology in banks those days.

"It was debits and credits and an adding machine," Lyons said. "There really wasn't much."

She would go on to work at the bank for the next 42 years, retiring recently to spend more time with her grandchildren, her horses and farm.

More than anything, she will miss the people that she came to know as employees and customers of the bank, now a branch of The Killbuck Savings Bank.

"I love helping people and problem solving," she said. "I like looking through a checkbook for a mistake. I also enjoy helping people when they've had something big happen in their lives: for instance, getting married."

Before online banking, customers actually visited the bank more often.

"You got to know their life story," she said. "They became your friends."

She remembers the bank's many financial contributions over the years to schools, nonprofit organizations and partnering with community events such as the Knox County Fair.

Technology has improved banking, said Lyons.

"You can look things up quicker," she said. "That part has been good. In some places, people don't even go to the bank anymore. But in our community, a lot of people still like to come in. We like to see them."

Lyons has held many positions over her career, moving from teller to head teller, then to bookkeeping, internal auditing to branch manager and at the end of her tenure, senior manager, with five branches.

"All of our branches still have that community feel," she said. "The tellers genuinely want to help the customers. It's not a big bank where you walk in and you're just a number. They know you. It's just a good place to work."

Recently, a customer came into the bank to set up an account for his grandchild.

"He told me it had just occurred to him that this was the fourth generation of his family that I had helped," Lyons said. "I had helped his grandparents, his parents, him and now his grandchildren. That is not an isolated case. In community banking, helping families over many generations is common."

After 42 years, the cowgirl rides away.