Jennie Williams wraps up 15 years at Citizens

Jennie Williams Jennie Williams will retire Tuesday, Feb. 28, nearly 15 years to the day from the day she started at Citizens Bank. She will be honored with a reception from 2 until 4 p.m. in the Citizens Bank lobby.

Her banking career started in 1972 and has spanned all or parts of four decades. She has worked in almost every facet of banking – teller, note department, loan department, collections – but most of her time has been bank’s oil and gas department.

B. Charles Spradlin, senior vice president of the department, started the oil and gas department just a short while before Williams came on board. When she began her career with Citizens Bank, she was hired to do collections but moved into the loan area just a month after being employed. Three months later she moved into the oil and gas department, servicing oil and gas loans as well as other types of loans.

As time the oil and gas department grew, Williams’ concentration moved solely to oil and gas loans.

Your customers and co-workers are like a second family. And, when you retire and lose day-to-day contact with them, it is very difficult.”

Williams said she has enjoyed working in the energy department for Citizens Bank.

“Oil and gas loans are very detailed, very involved, and you have to be extremely careful to get everything correct, just like you do with any other loan,” she said. “But, at the same time, they are very good for bonding with a customer and cementing a relationship that can last for years.”

Williams said she still works with some of her very first customers at Citizens Bank, helping them with loans and other financial services they need.

“You help a business with loans and other financial advice and services, and you can take pride when a company grows and prospers, knowing you had something – even if it is only a small, insignificant role – to do with their success.”

Williams said this thought process really comes into play when a company that began its successful climb by using Citizens Bank outgrows the bank and has to find a larger financial institution to use.

“We have customers that literally have outgrown us,” she said. “This is good in the fact that we helped them to become so successful. But, it is bad in ... that we no longer have them as a customer because their growth was so outstanding.”

Those ties with her customers and the people she has met from all over the world are things she says she will miss.

“Seeing people year after year at the oil expos and renewing acquaintances is really fun,” she said. “Also, talking to people from other banks is a great memory I will take into my retirement. I have developed some good friendships through those trips, and I will miss seeing those people the several times a year when those meetings are held.”

Though it sounds like Williams is not looking forward to retirement, she said there will be plenty of things to occupy her time once she leaves the bank.

“I don’t mean to make it sound like I am dreading retirement,” she said. “My husband, Freddie, retired last year and, while our health is good, we have some things we have always wanted to do but have not set aside the time. Well, now we will have the time.”

Some of those “things” include a trip to Washington D.C. to see the cherry blossoms in April and a trip to Montana in September with a side trip to Colorado to see that state when the leaves are changing. Also, she said she and her husband have a wonderful group of friends they can spend more time with.

“We want to travel, and we have a place at Lake O’ The Pines that we have been working on for a year,” she said. “Also, we have enough kids and grandkids involved in activities to keep us busy as well.

“... I am happy not to have to get up and come to work every day and I am thrilled to not have a definite place to be at a certain time,” she said. “But, I am sad because of all of the people I have worked with on a daily basis that I will not be able to see, and it is very sad to think about the great customers and friendships I have made working oil and gas loans.”

Celebrating Williams’ retirement with her are husband, Freddie, son, Todd and his wife, Mary, son, Tim and his wife, Jeannette, and 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

She also looks forward to spending additional time working in her church, the Chandler Street Church of Christ.