Six Days to Seventy

Diplomas and Weddings and Babies, Oh My!

There were college graduations all over the country and weddings that started in 1990 and strung themselves out with the last one in 1997. Only the first two were celebrated at our River Forest home. In 1991 Joe, earned his Masters in Taxation from DePaul , retired from Andersen and joined the IRS - I referred to it as "sleeping with the enemy". We had also reached the age that would allow us to sell our home without a big capital gains tax. The big old house had served its purpose, but with the kids starting to move out it wasn't necessary, and was probably three $10,000. projects waiting to happen. It was a great party house and often a gathering place for the Illinois Crawford clan.

Now on to the babies. Andrew soon became oldest cousin to Carolyn '92, Carrie and Jake '93, Erica '94, Jack, Cathleen and Stephen '95, Ryan and Kathryn '97, Bridget and Kelly '99. What a treasure chest of beautiful children - our true riches.

In 1992 we moved into our condo downtown. We (our friend and attorney Jack) closed on the house in the morning and the condo in the afternoon. I cried all the way on the drive down on the Ike, but as soon as we said goodbye to the moving men, and hello to our attorney, as we looked out the windows at our floor-to- ceiling lake view, I knew I'd never look back. We had cut our living space in half and doubled our quality of life.

I was now in a senior management role at the bank. Our owners had decided to sell all the banks they owned, except ours - so six of us with the help of a brokerage firm and a cartload of lawyers put together a private placement and became the class B shareholders of Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. We paid a darn good dividend.

We ran the bank for about 4 years until we sold it in 1994 to Banco Popular de Puerto Rico. It was a logical marriage as their sole branch in Chicago shared our market, our customer base and our mission to serve the underbanked community. I remained with Banco Popular and finished out the decade as the manager of our 21 Chicago Branches. I continued to be active in the community and as chairman of the Logan Square YMCA board drove the fundraising efforts that allowed us to build a new building to replace the falling-apart former bank building it called home.

Sadly this is also the decade when we buried our mother - just weeks before Terry's wedding. My mother had a very deep faith which allowed her to die peacefully and smiling. The sendoff we gave her was the best I've ever experienced. Her 10 grandchildren and our cousin Sr. Dianne, pulled it off without a hitch. Every time I think about doing something not so nice, I remember she is watching - sometimes I do it anyway - just so she'll have a reason to say LYYYYNNNNN JAAAAAANE!