Longtime Minnesota bank owner William Watts Pye II passed away May 26 at 87 years old. .Watts Pye owned Management Systems, a leadership training and management consulting firm, for three decades. In 1985, he became head of the last of the Pye Family banks in Morristown, Minn., a position he held until Lake Country Community Bank was sold to the Vang family in 2022. At the time, the bank, headquartered south of the Twin Cities, had $35.9 million in assets. Watts Pye remained on the board after it was sold. Today, Lake Country Community Bank remains independent and locally-owned, with branches in Morristown and Nerstrand, Minn. Born in Northfield, Minn., Pye graduated from Minnetonka, Minn., High School in 1957. He later received an economics degree from Ripon College in Wisconsin and an MBA from Indiana University in Bloomington.
