BANKER CELEBRATING MILESTONE

BANKER CELEBRATING MILESTONE

(Citizens Bank will be celebrating Walter Glenn Birdwell’s 90th birthday Friday, November 30, at the bank.)

Well-known Carthage banker Walter Glenn Birdwell Jr. doesn’t keep bankers’ hours. Approaching the age of 90, the Carthage native arrives to work at Citizens Bank’s Carthage headquarters at 7 a.m. The day usually ends at 4 p.m. “I’m just happy they still let me have an office,” jokes Birdwell, who sits in on the bank’s morning loan officers meetings.

For decades, the name Birdwell has been synonymous with Carthage banking. The Carthage banker continues to be one of the bank’s most recognized faces. To see Birdwell walking down the street or at a community function, Citizens Bank immediately comes to mind. Birdwell’s father and others organized the bank in 1929, days before the crash of the stock market.

It wasn’t a given Birdwell would pursue his father’s banking interests, though he was employed with the bank during his high school years, working after school and on Saturdays. As a youth, Birdwell contemplated becoming a dentist or maybe a lawyer.

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