Watching Valley Bank become Bank One in 1992, Phoenix, Arizona

In a life filled with lucky breaks, two of the best happened to me in the early nineties - I started working at Valley National Bank in Phoenix, and I was there when it became Bank One. And if you worked for VNB at the time, you may recall it as the best of times, or the worst of times. For most of the people that I've ever talked to about it, there is very little in between. For me, it was the best of times.

When I got the job at Valley Bank, in the Marketing Department as a graphic designer, I was very happy to have landed another corporate job, in my profession, in a large company. My last job had been at Blue Cross of California in Los Angeles, and I had developed a taste for the corporate life. And all I saw at VNB was that - offices, shiny windows, break rooms, 401Ks, paid vacations. What I didn't realize at the time was that I had just come aboard a sinking ship - Valley Bank had been in terrible financial condition for a long time. Some of the old-timers told me what was happening, and my favorite quote about the situation was: "If Valley Bank goes out of business, everyone will have to leave Arizona, and the last one turns out the light."

And the truth was that Valley Bank was so tied into the economy of Arizona that if it keeled over, it would do tremendous damage to Arizona. Of course, for me, my attitude was just that it would be a shame for me to lose such a great job!

Of course, banks do fail, and even with the amount of cleanup the FDIC could do, it would still be a disaster to the people who lived in Arizona. And the reason that I keep mentioning Arizona is that interstate banking, which is common today, was still illegal back then. Going back to the Great Depression, banks were not allowed, by law, to extend beyond state boundaries, the thought being that if they did fail, the damage would be contained to that particular state. I don't want to think about what would have happened to my beloved state in those circumstances, and fortunately it didn't.

There was a bank in Columbus, Ohio that was going around buying up banks like Valley Bank, and that's what they did. And for someone like me, who was young and new to the company, it didn't matter what the logo looked like. I quickly adapted to the new corporate standards, and my career rode on that crest. I know that there were plenty of people who couldn't stand the thought of working for Bank One instead of Valley Bank, but it was all the same for me, and besides, I like the color blue.

I don't remember the exact day and date, but I remember that it was a Saturday that everything switched over from Valley Bank to Bank One. Every tiny detail, the signage, the deposit slips, the brochures, everything. One day customers walked into a Valley Bank in Arizona and the next day they walked into a Bank One. Our department worked very hard, and yes there were bonuses for our hard work.

It was the best of times.

Image at the top of this post: 1995 brochure for the One Card.

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