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Today's Featured Biography

Conrad Lawlor

The death of John F.Kennedy, November 22 1963
yes that does bring back memories, at that day and time, I was in my
office at General Filter Co. in Ames. I was the chief and only cost estimator of
the water and sewage treatment equip manufactured by GFC. It was about noon
that one of the engineer came into my office and told me that "Kennedy had been
shot!" There were about 4 civil engineers there working for GFC.

To go back about one year, in 1962, I had been nominated in the Primary to run
for Iowa State Treasurer a Democrat. The long term Republican was elected. After Ames High School graduation in 1947, I went to Loras College in Dubuque for 2 years and then transfered to De Paul University college of business and graduated in 1952. Then into UD Navy and became a Seabee and spend the Coldest Winter in Korea in 1953.

Neal Smith told me that a new job was coming to Des Moines and suggested I
contact the US Federal Civil Service agency regarding it.
The US Department of Commerce was opening a new district office in Des Moines. I
compiled an employment application form and in spring of 1963 FCS requested that
I come to their office in Minneapolis for an interview.
Well that interview went well, and with my Degree BSC in commerce from DePaul
University, the largest School of Commerce in the world, in a few days I
received approval notice that I was placed on their schedule of approved civil
service appointees.
Because I was a combat veteran in Korean War in the US Navy Seabees, my name was
on the top of the list, and in the federal rules, only another qualified
military veterans could be appointed to that position.

Well many months went by and nothing happened. Then in a couple of weeks after
President Johnson was sworn in as the new President in 1963, I was notified that I had
been appointed to that position director in the US Department of Commerce office
in Des Moines. Again, in a few days later, I was contacted that I had been
approved to become the Director of the new US Small Business Administration
office in Des Moines. Because my BSC degree primary best interest was finance
and I remember the Professor in Finance saying the best way to rob a bank is to
buy a bank, SBA was by preferences. I was then appointed to be Branch Manage
of the new SBA Des Moines office located in the Insurance Exchange Building
there.
I was pleased that all the loan officers there were former FDIC auditors or
retired former bankers. I just really liked working with Iowa bankers, most of
which did not know how to make a small business loans, unless it was to a
farmer. Those were easy for them to make, all they had to do is take a 2nd
mortgage on the farm land. The failure rate on those farms were zero.
It did not take long to discover the need to promote the bankers to have their
loan officers to take the home study course from the American Bankers
Association and then become a Certified Commercial Lender. When they did that
they would put CCL after their name when signing documents.

I would only promote my loan officers to a GS-12 promotion until they could put
CCL after their names. As a result, in a few years Iowa had more SBA loan
guarantees than the entire state of California. When I retired from SBA after
serving a Regional Director of the Kansas City 4 state office SBA office, then
Regional in Denver SBA office, I was detailed to Washington, DC to be the
national SBA districts office review Director. After traveling all over the US
and making the audit presentation of my three audit teams, I could not take it
any more and when the Director of the old Des Moines SBA office retired, I
applied for a demotion to that job again in Des Moines. Soon the US House went
Republican and we had Clinton as President, SBA was just about completely closed
down by the new persons in the House Small Business Committee, when they moved
all the SBA positions to two new locations, one in California and the other to
eastern Kentucky.

It was then that I learned that my first appointment to federal service in 1963 was
delayed by President Kennedy because I was a Roman Catholic and that is what I
remember about November, 1963. I am still an Iowa Democrat and was a first supporter of President Obama in the primary in 2007.

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