By Brad Crocker
Friday, October 12, 2007
BARBOUR STOPS IN JACKSON COUNTY
Gov. Haley Barbour said Merchants & Marine Bank's new $7.5 million 40,000-square-foot Flagship Pascagoula Branch is a symbol of Mississippi's recovery after Hurricane Katrina.
Speaking to a room full of bank shareholders Thursday, Barbour said the new building represented what he predicted days after Katrina, "that the Mississippi Gulf Coast would build back bigger and better than ever."
He called the bank's outdoor park and gazebo setting "a very special thing," because it is offered to the public, provides a sense of community and reflects where the community is as a whole.
"Y'all have a lot to be proud of," Barbour told the shareholders, who were participating in one of the week-long celebrations that began Monday recognizing the bank's 75th anniversary.
Festivities conclude today with a 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting featuring Sen. Trent Lott. Lott has an office in the new bank building, which had a soft opening this summer.
Bank president and CEO Royce Cumbest got the meeting started by ringing a bell that was rung in 1932 on the opening day of the original branch on Delmas Avenue in downtown Pascagoula. ...
Cumbest said a group of "pretty courageous people" started the bank despite the effects of the Great Depression. The new branch, he added, is a symbol of that same investment in "not just a building, but an investment in people."
"I think they (original partners) would be proud of where we are today," Cumbest said.
Rena Ford, now 94, of Pascagoula, was the first depositor at the bank, bringing her pay as a registered nurse she earned from a hospital in Mobile.
"I think it was only about a dollar, but that was a lot of money then," she said.
When asked about why she has stayed with M&M Bank and its hometown customer service approach, Ford said, "This is the only place I want to live and only place I'll ever bank." ...
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