|
The following was
the front page news article from Pharos Tribune, June 10, 2003.
City loses bank president,
community leader
Richard W. Cassidy
led formation of foundation, served on Wabash College Board
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
By DAVE KITCHELL
Pharos-Tribune
staff writer
A
Logansport native known for his personality and commitment to
community banking passed away Monday evening.
Richard W. Cassidy Jr., 60, president
of Security Federal Savings Bank, died of an apparent heart attack.
Cassidy, the son of Richard W.
and Norma Cassidy who formerly operated Sycamore Drive-In for
years, was active in several community organizations. He
was an integral figure in the formation of the Cass County Community
Foundation and its original umbrella organization, the Northern
Indiana Community Foundation. Together with representatives
from Fulton and Miami counties, Cassidy was able to come up with
the county population requirement necessary to receive funding
from the Lilly Endowment to establish the foundation. He
later served on the boards of both foundations. He also has served
on the Wabash College Board.
He is survived by his wife, Carolyn,
and two adult sons, Brendon and Michael.
Cassidy had served as president
of Security Federal Savings Bank for 20 years after leaving the
First National Bank of Logansport where he was senior vice president,
staff counsel and trust officer. At Security Federal, Cassidy
gained a reputation for transforming the bank into an aggressively
local institution, changing the name, expanding the bank to include
a branch on Mall Road and adding and remodeling downtown offices
to the 50-year-old institution formerly known as First Federal
Savings & Loan Association.
Cassidy was named vice president
and staff counsel at the National Bank of Logansport in 1976
after joining the bank as legal coordinator in 1973. By
then he was president of the Rotary Club and the treasurer and
member of the YMCA Board and the Salvation Army Advisory Board.
He was active in the Cass County, Indiana and the American
bar associations.
He began his legal career with
the Logansport law firm of Miller, Tolbert, Hirschauer and Wildman
after receiving his law degree from Boston University.
He was admitted to the Ohio Bar and practiced briefly in Cleveland.
As an attorney, he received the
Res Gestae Award for the outstanding Indiana legal article of
the year for "The Illinois Land Trust in Indiana Practice"
published in the bar association's monthly journal.
A 1961 graduate of Logansport High
School, he was a member of the Key Club and a student Rotarian.
He was senior class secretary and a member of the band
and National Honor Society. He received his A.B. degree
from Wabash in 1965 and was president of Sigma Chi fraternity.
He also was a member of Blue Key and the national German honorary,
Delta Phi Alpha. He received a Rotary Foundation Fellowship for
study at the University of Wurzburg School of Law in Germany
in 1965.
Cassidy served on the Logansport/Cass
County Public Library Board and the Logansport Planning Commission.
He was a member of Calvary Presbyterian Church and was
an adjunct lecturer at Indiana University Kokomo.
In 1988, he received the Book of
Golden Deeds from the Logansport Evening Exchange Club. He
received one of the highest honors in the community after chairing
the 1985 capital fund drive for the Cass County Family Y. He
also was chairman of the Logansport-Cass County Economic Development
Foundation Board and received the Frank McHale Award from the
foundation. He was president of the Logansport Elementary School
Building Corporation and the Logansport Memorial Hospital Building
Corporation. He was a United Way Board member and was alumni
admission representative at Wabash College. He also served
on the Logansport Advisory Council of IUK.
Among his pastimes were calligraphy
and playing percussion instruments for Civic Players of Logansport
for 16 years.
|
|
The following was
on the editorial page from Pharos Tribune, June 11, 2003.
Cassidy: The man who
banked on Logansport
by Dave Kitchell, opinion page editor
As
we warmed up at the end of the Benjamin Long Center basketball
court Monday night, we talked about the days when Oscar Robertson
played in Logansport.
Dick Cassidy, rebounding my shots
when I wasn't rebounding his, remembered that Oscar could shut
anyone down defensively whenever he wanted to on the court, except
for his own brother, Bailey Robertson. Bailey played at
Riverside Park in the summer Kiwanis basketball tournament, as
did many Indiana high school and college legends.
There was talk of Ron Bonham, the
Muncie Central Mr. Basketball, and Jimmy Rayl the Splendid Splinter
of Kokomo who Cassidy maintained always fell backward, and had
a shot that was better than Rick Mount's.
Suddenly minutes later, it was
tragically apparent that the conversation we just had, like so
many over the last 25 years I've had with him, was to be our
last. Despite the efforts of the friends he played with
on Monday nights, Logansport police officers and EMTs and firefighters
who had to have come as quickly as humanly possible, it was not
humanly possible to keep Dick among us any longer.
Age 60 is a long time for some
people to live and not long enough for others. For Dick,
it was not as long as he would have liked. He loved living
and paying attention to the minute details of life that somehow
everyone else either missed, never cared about or wouldn't understand.
It was that side of his personality
that made him the natural person to come up with a weekly schedule
for the Kiwanis-Rotary football contest between the two largest
service organizations in Logansport. His 25th and last
game on the sheet usually pitted two obscure schools such as
Puget Sound and Simon Frazier or Slippery Rock vs. Shippensburg
State. Then there was Coast Guard vs. Maine Maritime, Gustavus
Aldophus vs. St Olaf or Indiana vs. California - the small colleges
in Pennsylvania that is. Cassidy usually knew what their
record was, how the teams performed the previous week, where
they were located and what their mascots were.
Such was the sense of humor of
a man who was a bank president for 20 years. More importantly
for the people who call this community home, he was a man who
banked on Logansport. He had a law degree and could have gone
many places and done many things. He chose to return to
Logansport, play drums in the Civic Players pit orchestras and
take occasional extended breaks from rehearsals to go to the
Sycamore Drive-In, where his father made a living and carved
a Logansport niche for himself for several years with the creamiest
ice cream around.
Cassidy was a popular emcee and
the question about his life in Logansport is not what he was
involved in, it's what he wasn't involved in, and that wasn't
much. Still, he found time to visit his sons, to travel
to the shores of Maine every summer with his family and to make
it to an obscure getaway, such as a recent conference where he
played centuries old music.
The Cassidy wardrobe was occasionally
interesting. A fur hat and bow ties were among his accouterments
along with obscure T-shirts. The latest was from the University
of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He could find a rare book or write
with one of several calligraphy pens that he kept within arm's
length of his rolled up sleeves. He once penned calligraphy
for former publisher Jud Druck that read "The soul lies
buried in the ink that writes."
Deep down, the soul that lie in
Dick was a person who enjoyed a good story, a good argument and
a lot of good causes.
Had things gone differently he
might have been the Cass Circuit Court judge when the late Norman
L. Kiesling died, but it was not meant to be. Instead,
he took on the role of bank president proving that he would not
be obscured by larger banks with out of state owners. He
prided himself in hiring local people and providing local service
at or below the cost of other banks. In his own self-promotional
way, he put a hometown spin on his cable, radio and print ads.
Leaves falling down the stairwell of the bank in the fall,
a basketball dunked from atop a ladder, a mock dip in the Eel
River during the winter, and a splash across the face to signify
summer were among his most memorable ads before he would utter
his self-made tag line, "If you're not banking at Security
Federal, you should be."
But Cassidy deserves credit for
some serious forethought. After working for the former
First National Bank of Logansport when the late Frank McHale
established a charitable trust there, Cassidy realized the day
would come when that trust would expire and dozens of local charities
would have to scrape, beg and bake sale their way to finance
community projects. He also realized that what had to be
done was to join forces with the Lilly Endowment to form the
last community foundation in Indiana to secure seed funding with
a base of 100,000 residents. He worked with residents of
Cass, Fulton and Miami counties to make it happen, and he did.
Today, tens of thousands of dollars are awarded annually
because of his effort, and ultimately more than Frank McHale,
a far wealthier man, ever provided Logansport, will be distributed
because of him.
That kind of community commitment
is not that ongoing in many communities, but is often the case
here, and it reminds me of the day Cassidy sat next to me in
a pew at All Saints Catholic Church when we attended the funeral
of the late Fred Sabatini. Sab had been a mentor to a generation
of younger lawyers that included Cassidy, and a completely quiet
Dick sat next to me realizing that a gauntlet had been passed
to his generation.
It was a somber day - as have been
the last two days since Dick's passing. Once again, a gauntlet
has been passed, and the contributions that just one person can
make to a community should not be obscured by the timing or the
place or the way they leave this world.
And by now if you're not thinking
Cassidy was one of the most colorful characters who ever spent
his life in Logansport, you should be.
Dave Kitchell may
be contacted at 722-5000, Ext. 5150, or via e-mail at david.kitchell@pharostribune.com
His column appears on Wednesday.
|