We’re living in an era in which it seems like we are running out of "firsts."
In recent years, we elected the first black president of the United States and the first black governor of Massachusetts. And if we hadn’t elected Barack Obama as the first black president, there’s a fighting chance we may have elected the first female president in Hillary Clinton, if she had won the Democratic nomination instead.
More locally, we are following the story of GFA Federal Credit Union being the first credit union in the country to purchase a stock bank as it pursues its acquisition of Monadnock Community Bank of Peterborough, N.H.
In a fitting case of symmetry, in the 1990s, Monadnock itself was the first credit union to pursue conversion to a bank.
Recently, we wrote about Eastern Bank Corporator Gunner Scott, potentially the first openly transgender individual to serve on a bank board of any kind in the country. To be fair, Scott may not be the first, but if he’s not, Eastern Bank says it isn’t aware of any others.
In this issue of Banker & Tradesman, we have a small story on Donna Abelli, the first woman elected to chair the board of Independent Bank Corp., and its subsidiary Rockland Trust Co.
This is after she served as the first chairwoman of the Massachusetts Society of CPAs.
All of these firsts – and countless others we’ve been witness to in the past – are notable milestones, to be sure. Forward progress depends upon the very act of taking a first step, of being the first to both open and step through any given door.
But progress doesn’t stop at one. What’s truly important about the first step is that it enables a second step, and a third, until it becomes a march. One person through a door is one thing, but a crowd of people through a door is a movement.
Which is why we agree with Abelli’s statement on her status as the first chairwoman at Independent: "I’m happy to be the first, and to say that I’m not going to be the last."
As our society slowly moves beyond the racial and gender barriers that arbitrarily divided us in the past – progress that is admittedly fitful and too often marked by steps backward – we expect both the number of firsts to diminish and the cultural impact of those firsts that remain to be dulled.
Because the door has already been opened by any number of successful female heads of state in other nations – the Golda Meirs, Margaret Thatchers and Angela Merkels of the world – will it really be so shocking to eventually see a female president of the United States?
Or, for that matter, a female, black president of the United States? Or a female, black, transgender president?
Yes, these achievements will be notable. Perhaps, in their earliest stages, even pivotal.
But as history marches on and more step through these doors that continue to be opened locally, nationally and globally, these "firsts" will hopefully become, in the words of Independent Bank Corp. and Rockland Trust President and CEO Christopher Oddleifson, "an interesting footnote." History’s judgments will hopefully not rest on the fact these people were the first of their gender, race and/or faith to do what they did, but rather hinge on whether they were simply any good at it.
At least, that’s the way we think it should be. And we’d be proud to be the "first" to say it.
