Alliance Bank in Sulphur Springs

CNB Will Host 50 Years Celebration for Phyllis Loyd

Phyllis Stewart went to work at City National Bank on February 24, 1969. Now, in 2019, her career in banking has spanned 50 years, and Phyllis still enjoys her job at CNB’s downtown location in Sulphur Springs, Texas. A celebration will be held in her honor on Thursday February 28 from 1-3pm. Her friends and customers are invited to stop by !

Phyllis first started out in the bookkeeping department which was upstairs in the original bank. In those pre-computer days, the bookkeepers had to arrive at 7:30am in order to post all deposits and transactions on paper and get them downstairs by 9am. This was so that the tellers would have a current record of account activity when bank customers began to come in. The account transactions were posted on large yellow sheets on a Burrows machine located on the second floor. “We employees became like a family, and still are! One of the tellers I remember so well was Mandy Mosely who was always so sweet and so encouraging to younger employees just starting out. And Mr. Lonnie Campbell was a positive force back then too, for over 40 years. Sometimes we bank ladies would shop on our lunch hours at Marshalls and at Ellen’s Dress Shop. We would often grab a sandwich at Faulks or at Graves Drugstore, or at Nelson’s Corner Drug. The whole downtown area, including the bank, had a family feeling to it”.

In early 1969 when Phyllis came on board, the bank was actually located in temporary quarters. The bank rented Mr. Joe Dan Avinger’s insurance office space down the street and the employees worked out of that space until December 1969 when the new bank building was completed. The Avinger offices were where the CNB drive-thru is now. Over the years, more of the 200 block of Connally Street, spaces where the Mission Theatre, Don Deaton’s Barber Shop and Haynesworth Jewelry were, have been purchased for CNB expansion and parking to serve the historic downtown location.

In 1971, Phyllis became Mrs. Rickey Loyd and continued in her job at the bank. Over the years, she has worked as a teller as well as in collections, and has been in the Accounting department for 18 years, now in an upstairs office with no window. “I had a window by my desk for many years which overlooked the entrance to the alley. That’s the alley which runs between what is now Corner Grubhouse and Potato House. The sights I’ve seen in that alley, well I couldn’t tell you about them now!”.

Phyllis is not planning to retire. She likes to take trips. “When we get ready to go somewhere, we just go. Rickey and I just returned from a CNB Destinations trip to New Orleans and we also went and stayed at the Biltmore last year. With my two daughters Michelle and Lynette and the two grandkids, I am pretty happy doing just what I’m doing now.”

Author: Enola Gay

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