Former bank CEO Dick Kelley remembers the good old days when banks didn’t have guards: his branch manager kept a gun in his desk, and took it out every now and then to clean it.

A lot has changed since Kelley was a teller at Barnstable County National Bank on Cape Cod in 1955. Back then, he balanced the day’s transactions in a handwritten Boston ledger. He knew all his customers by their first and last names. And they knew his.

Kelley will be one of dozens of "old" bankers gathering at an American Bankers Association Reunion June 12-13 on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The reunion is being held to mark 125 years of executive education at the elite ABA Stonier National Graduate School of Banking (formerly the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, which merged with America’s Community Bankers’ National School of Banking in 2008). Together, the two schools have trained more than 20,000 of the nation’s top banking executives and government regulators, most of whom have reached — or will reach — the pinnacles of their organizations.

The reunion will bring together the bankers of yesteryear with today’s emerging bank leaders who are likely to compare notes about how the industry has changed, especially in the past couple of years.

"If I could give one piece of advice to young bankers today, I’d tell them there is no substitution for working your way up. You have to know how every department in a bank works, and you have to know your customers personally. Banks today have gotten away from that," Kelley said.
Speakers include Michael E. Collins, executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Thomas J. Harrington, executive assistant director of the FBI’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch.