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William (Bill) McGuire's avatar

Very good, Joyce. As a banker for 22 yrs of my career all in TX, I can say honestly that I dealt with a few black customers & some Hispanic customers in my lending duties, which didn't include home mortgages. I was mostly a consumer lending bank branch President my last 6 or so yrs. One of my black customers was "pushed" off on me by one of my banker friends. Mr. Gilbert was blind & had to get around with the help of his wife Terry. Although Mr. Gilbert was a real pain sometimes to work with, we not only became friends, he was as good a loan risk as there ever was. I learned that he was a very good businessman. He had a good head on his shoulders. Granted, there were many times he bothered me at home with his phone calls that would last 30-45 minutes, and my wife wasn't pleased, but I grew to understand that when he had an idea, he trusted me to tell him what I thought, and I was always honest with him. He attempted to help his older son repair his bad credit, but to no avail. Mr. Gilbert disliked using one of his Certificates of Deposit as collateral for his son's loans, but he had no choice as I didn't trust the son to pay on time due to his multiple bad lines of credit on his report. I can smile about some of the stories that I won't go into here, but suffice to say, sometimes color isn't as important as the opportunity to help someone achieve one of their goals. Mr. Gilbert amazed me in that I'd be at his house, outside always, where he was working on a car or truck. He wasn't always blind, and he knew vehicles, so he could do work on them with a little help from his son or from his wife. His younger son played high school football, and was a great kid. I liked him a lot. I don't know who took care of Mr. Gilbert after I was out of banking in 2009, but I hope he was still successful. I know one time that he bought a fixer upper house close to where he lived, and he and his son, along with his wife began to make repairs themselves. I think he bought it for $17,000, and by the time he'd fixed it up with new appliances and paint, etc., he rented it to a Hispanic family on a rent to own contract. If the family made 12 payments on time & they wanted to buy the house, he would sell it to them on a new contract and carry the note himself. He sold that particular house for $60, 000+. If they became past due, he could always foreclose and sell it again. Smart man. Not a slum lord by any stretch either. He always called me, Mr. McGuire, never Bill, his wife either, so I mostly called him Mr. Gilbert. I enjoyed our lunches together after I was out of banking. One of these days, I intend to find out if he is still alive. I doubt he is. I never lost a cent on him, and I made him some good interest on his certificate of deposits (I convinced him that borrowing against a vehicle was more costly than against his CDs). I think I broke him from trying to help his older son fix his credit after about 3 yrs. I doubt that one ever learned his lesson. I am happy to have played a part in his success and that we became friends who didn't play golf together. Glad the DOJ got things set straight with its Civil Rights Division. Tough duty that. Peace.

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Reine's avatar

Exactly! “We want DOJ to hold those who are most responsible, all of them, accountable for what they have put the country through.”

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