Larry Alan Manry

Bringing dignity to banking

 Larry Manry, the Northwest Arkansas regional president of Bank of America, in the lobby of his office on the square in Fayetteville Tuesday October 14, 2014.
Larry Manry, the Northwest Arkansas regional president of Bank of America, in the lobby of his office on the square in Fayetteville Tuesday October 14, 2014.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Larry Manry views his role as Northwest Arkansas market president for Bank of America as not only a front runner for bankers, but as a moral leader.

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NWA Media

Larry Manry, the Northwest Arkansas regional president of Bank of America, in his office on the square in Fayetteville Tuesday October 14, 2014.

Perhaps times have changed or perhaps just the job description has, but young Manry admired the banking profession because the men in it were upstanding guys who were there to lend their neighbors a helping hand.

"People thought of bankers in a way that I wanted to be thought of ... they expected you to be a leader in the community, to help people," he says. "They expected you to be honest. They expected you to be hardworking. They expected all these things that I could look at and say that I could be proud of who I am."

In more than 40 years of banking, Manry, 67, has spent equal amounts of time in service to the community through United Way and as a Sunday School teacher at Mount Comfort Church of Christ in Fayetteville.

This fall, Manry was integral in Bank of America's donation of $10,000 to a matching grant with Harps Food Stores and Endeavor Care Foundation to get Mini Meals for Middle School up and running.

The Samaritan House-based program provides meals to students who qualify for free and reduced lunch programs, which is more than half the children in Northwest Arkansas and almost 95 percent in some schools, according to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. The program is for children in grades 6-7 and the meals they carry home often feed the whole family for the weekend.

"We have so many food-challenged children in Northwest Arkansas, it's hard to believe we could have that here," says Roger Collins, chief executive officer of Harps. "We were doing stuff for elementary-age children but nothing for older groups.

"With the help of Bank of America, we came up with a plan to fund the Samaritan House's ability to put Mini Meals program into all the middle schools ... for children whose next meal [after Friday lunch] comes on Monday."

The program has been implemented in Springdale, then will spread to Rogers, Fayetteville and Bentonville over the next five years.

"Larry really headed that up there," Collins says. "One of the neat things about him is that it's easy for the bank to give money, but Larry's out there building houses for Habitat for Humanity, filling snacks at Mini Meals and is involved in the work of the charities.

"He volunteers his time. You don't see that often with people on the executive level."

Although it would be difficult for someone of Manry's position to know personally the predicament that these children and their families are in, he says that's exactly why he volunteers -- to eradicate hunger, needless suffering or any obstacle to a better future.

"When I was in sixth grade, that was the last thing on my mind -- where my meal was coming from," Manry says. "The concept is that these kids are bringing food home for the family that would probably go hungry on the weekend without it.

"I deal with big numbers a lot and when you see meals that cost three or four dollars to feed a family, it sort of takes you aback. 'How could that be?'"

A SHINING EXAMPLE

Manry grew up in Miami, the son of a bank president. Though his family didn't pressure him to follow in his father's footsteps, he wanted to.

Each holiday season brought several hundred Christmas cards from the people his father had helped, and when Manry's dad passed away at 58, the overwhelming crowds required two funerals so that everyone could attend.

Manry knew his father was an honorable man. That's not to say he didn't give any other professions a passing thought.

While in high school, he took college chemistry with the inkling that he could become a dentist, but it didn't work out.

Rather than spending his summers pushing grocery carts or pumping gas, Manry's father helped him secure a job at Florida National Bank at Coral Gables, another local operation. The elder Manry was afraid that people would talk if he hired his son at his own bank.

As a part-time night auditor, Manry arrived at the bank at 4 p.m. and collected all the debit and credit tickets of the day to settle the bank's assets and liabilities on carbon paper.

Surrounded by adding machine tapes, handwritten documents and ledgers, they called it "balancing the bank," and boy, was it painful when he accidentally wrote a wrong number, or things didn't add up.

"If you messed up, you had to start over," Manry says. "There were times I'd stay until midnight trying to figure out what was wrong.

"Meanwhile you learn, 'What does a loan do?' 'Where does the money go?' and 'How does [it] flow through the bank?' 'How does it affect the income statement?'"

It taught him a lot, even if Manry wasn't exactly a natural. He struggled through his first accounting class at the University of Miami.

He lived at home during college, and even though his hours were part time, Manry spent most of his day at the bank. He came in first thing in the morning to audit the work he'd done the night before and then spent the between hours at school.

Sundays were for church, and there he met a beautiful girl named Janice. Her mother had moved their church membership looking for better "talent," or boys that would make promising husbands.

The year of 1969 was a big one for Manry. He earned his degree in management, won Janice's hand in marriage and began another responsibility that would shape the man he wanted to be by joining the Army.

He went through a brief management training program with the Trust Company of Georgia, now known as SunTrust, and arrived for military service as an infantry officer and first lieutenant in 1970.

Manry prided himself in doing the kind of work that didn't involve combat, but still served the Army as a whole. At Fort Campbell, Ky., he did analysis and work simplification studies and prayed whenever there was rumor of him being sent to Vietnam.

"I figured the Lord knew if I ended up in Vietnam I would get somebody killed, maybe even me," he says. "They were training us to go, but we didn't.

"It was one of those things that you look at as it happens in your life and it can be a blessing or a curse, if you choose to let it happen that way, but I was very fortunate."

The closest he came to being shipped off was attending infantry school at Fort Benning, Ga.

By 1972, Manry walked away from the Army with some real-life management experience and a co-pay bill for $25 when his daughter, Jennifer, was born.

SERVANT TO OTHERS

Given the choice to return to Georgia or Florida after his military service, Manry chose to return to work at Florida National Bank, and enrolled in graduate work at Florida International University.

He continued to learn the ropes of banking and management during the day and attended school at night.

Manry rested easily in the knowledge that he could learn nearly all the responsibilities that went into operating a bank, and so could make himself valuable even as the business changed over time, while also taking care of his family.

He admits that if he were to start over now, the process would be entirely different.

"When I grew up you had to be really wide [in knowledge], but not very deep," Manry says. "Now it's really narrow, but really, really deep."

In his role of dual responsibility as market president for Northwest Arkansas and senior vice president for commercial credit products, Manry leads more than 100 people in community activities and business integration.

His job is to know a little bit about everything, to know which questions to ask and to be attuned to the wants and needs of Northwest Arkansas communities.

"All of the outside activities that his job requires him to do, he's had to change his attitude about," says Donnie Cook, Arkansas state president of the Bank of America. "He'd be the first to say he's private, but we required him to be more active in the community.

"He likes working with charitable organizations."

Knowing the community equips Manry with the right questions to better serve his clients.

He carries that habit to United Way board meetings, where he's an honorary member. His nickname is "ornery" member.

"I've been at United Way for 25 years and Larry's been involved since then," says Jill Darling, chief professional officer for the organization. "He doesn't just come to meetings. He's involved and supports where he can.

"Every year he did the training for loan executives, volunteers who help raise money. He does a great job explaining what it's about and is never afraid to speak his mind to get people to think differently."

Manry's passion for community service earned him the Dave Hollenbeck Joy of Giving Award in 2004.

MR. PRESIDENT

In the mid-1980s, J.B. Hunt, the late founder of J.B. Hunt Transport Services, began to form a team to turn First National Bank around when he bought the operation from Worthen Banking.

At the time, Manry was running a new branch of Florida National Bank. He'd become president of the bank -- quite an accomplishment for the not yet 40-year-old in the face of an industry change. Bank branches were a recent addition to the national scene, thanks to new legislation.

Happy to have the opportunity to live close to his wife's family, Manry applied for the First National position in July 1985. By August, he, Janice and their children moved to Northwest Arkansas.

"The bank was in trouble here," Manry says. "Hunt wanted to get new people to help clean it up ... we were having problems with the regulators and the bank was having capital problems and asset quality problems."

"Trouble" was right. Over the course of his first 10 years at the bank, it experienced five mergers. From Worthen Banking to First National, into J.B. Hunt's hands and back to Worthen; off to Boatmen's Bancshares, NationsBank and eventually Bank of America, well, Manry had his work cut out for him.

Rick Parsons, senior vice president and credit risk executive for Bank of America, met him during that time of great influx.

"He was a very competent banker," Parsons says. "Really focused on whatever the job was at hand.

"Bringing two organizations together is always challenging ... but if you talk to many of the people [who] have worked for Larry over the years ... all of them say he cares deeply about the people he works with, on a real personal level."

Having established such trust with his colleagues and direct reports helped Manry lead and move the bank forward, but so did his calm demeanor.

"He has great judgment, great rapport with people, is very even-tempered and doesn't let things get to him," Cook says. "I'm always impressed that no matter how difficult the situation, he maintains composure and deals with just about anything that came his way."

Though Manry had learned a lot about management in college and the military, it was Hunt's leadership that had a lasting impact on him, he says.

Hunt's very open style of generating ideas, his habit of working long, hard hours and his savvy way of crafting a team that is fully on board with the company's mission were the things that Manry strove to emulate daily.

Cook says he has led the Northwest Arkansas market in much the same way.

"He has the market president duties for Northwest Arkansas and I have president duties for central Arkansas," he says. "But I never have to worry about myself having to do anything with Larry's part of the state. I just have to worry about doing it as well as he does."

One consequence of keeping a job over a matter of decades, Manry says, is that he lost sight of the impact banking has on people's daily lives.

In his own family, Manry is surrounded by people in the medical and teaching fields, professions he held in such high regard that he downplayed his own.

The donation for the Mini Meals program gave him a wake-up call.

"I kick myself that I went this long without realizing the importance of [banking]," he says. "It's the image that I wanted, but didn't think I had."

No matter where Manry leads or serves, he still strives to be the example of moral dignity that he believes all bankers should have.

"Our purpose at Bank of America is to make people's financial lives better," Manry says. "We do those kinds of things. Whether it's feeding the world or providing the capital to do that ... if you bring your best everyday, you're able to elevate to a greater purpose."

NW Profiles on 12/21/2014

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