Remembering a community-minded banker: Clinton Kurtz

Clinton L. Kurtz, who owned and ran Citizens State Bank of Norwood Young America, Minn., for 22 years, died on Jan. 5; he was 87 years old. Kurtz was one of the first bankers I encountered as a young journalist/communications professional in the mid-1980s, and is part of the reason I found a home covering the banking industry..From 1989 until early 1991, I worked as communications director for the Minnesota Bankers Association. Kurtz had been MBA president in 1985-86 and I remember visiting with him often through MBA committees and activities. He was very generous with me, taking extra time to explain many of the details of running a bank.Kurtz was particularly interested in lobbying and I remember the association’s visits to the Capitol. Kurtz was right there, generally with a folder of newspaper clippings related to important stories of the day. Back then, that typically meant articles related to agriculture. Kurtz’s bank was located about 40 miles west of Minneapolis in rural country and he saw up close what the economic conditions meant for farmers. Reporting on the 1986 MBA convention, this magazine featured Kurtz telling attendees that lawmakers were attempting to solve ag sector problems by calling on the banks to do more. Having been a farmer in his youth, Kurtz understood the difficulties farmers faced, but as a banker, he also saw the difficulties disrupting the banking industry.During his MBA presidency, Kurtz drove a strategic planning process designed to bolster the association as many of its members slogged through the ag crisis. I was working at this magazine in the late 1980s when we launched our Banker of the Year program. Our first selection was Kelly Holthus, president of the First National Bank of York, Neb. He had been involved in the creation of Farmer Mac, and was president-elect of the American Bankers Association in addition to having served as president of the Nebraska Bankers Association. When it came time to honor a banker in 1990, magazine editor Jennifer Driscoll and I visited. Having changed jobs to work for the MBA, I suggested they consider Kurtz, given his extensive advocacy for ag-oriented banks. While the magazine received many nominations, Kurtz ultimately got the nod and Driscoll wrote a fine story about him as the magazine’s second Banker of the Year. The magazine has honored a banker every January since.Kurtz grew up a farm kid in Barney, N.D., earning a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and a master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University. After working as a farm loan representative for the Equitable Life Assurance Society, he got a job at Blue Earth State Bank in southern Minnesota. In 1971, D.J. Kehrer, president of the Citizens State Bank of Norwood, reached out to Kurtz. When Kurtz joined the bank in 1972, Kehrer made Kurtz a vice president, a director, and offered him a 20 percent stake in the bank, which had $5 million in assets at the time. In 1977, Kurtz and local business owner Dick Lano purchased the bank.As an Equitable representative, Kurtz had called on Leslie Peterson of the Farmers State Bank of Trimont, Minn. They subsequently became friends, and it was Peterson (MBA president in 1978-79) who encouraged Kurtz to get involved in the MBA.The ag crisis made bank ownership challenging. On top of the financial issues, Kurtz suffered a serious illness during his year as MBA president which required surgery and had him in the hospital for more than a month. In our Banker of the Year story, Driscoll noted that Kurtz continued to focus on his MBA leadership work, taking many meetings and phone calls from his hospital bed. “He doesn’t let anything stop him,” MBA Executive Vice President Truman Jeffers said at the time. “He is very committed; he has vision.”Kurtz was very community-minded, telling this magazine: “A banker is one who, over the long run, successfully balances bank profitability on one side and community service on the other.”Many community banks serving mostly farm customers didn’t make it through the 1980s, but Citizens State Bank of Norwood Young America did. Under Kurtz’s leadership, the bank grew to $33 million in assets by summer of 1999 when they sold it to Paul Pieschel whose Piesco, Inc., holding company owned Farmers & Merchants State Bank in Springfield, Minn. Since then, the Norwood Young America area has thrived, and the bank has too, having grown to $140 million in assets.