The trustees were scared. They had reason to worry. You might even wonder why they hadn’t acted sooner. The bank was losing money, lots of it, and something had to be done.

Finally, someone had enough sense to suggest, “We’ve got to bring a banker in.”

It was 1964, and a check-kiting scheme had enveloped Union Bank and Trust of Lincoln, Nebraska. The trouble had lasted awhile, at least as far back as 1963. The bank had a customer who was suspected of kiting checks, yet nobody had done anything to stop him.

There was Maynard Dunlap, the patriarch, who had come up in the industry during the Great Depression, learning how to make a go of it when times were hard. As a high schooler, Maynard had worked part-time at the bank in Tecumseh, Nebraska. He left for the armed services during World War I, but when his duties had finished he returned to Tecumseh and got rehired in the same bank, only to get fired from the job in the early 1920s, likely due to difficult economic conditions.

“Times were tough,” said one of his sons. “He never forgot being fired. The owner had to cut the staff, and that was it.”

He worked nights for a long time until they finally broke down and bought a posting machine. Somehow, even in the heart of the Great Depression, Maynard found a way to make a living on just $50,000 in bank deposits, thanks mostly to his entrepreneurial spirit. He supplemented his daily wage by settling debts during the Depression. In the days when people had little, if any, extra cash on hand, Maynard would approach banks and creditors on behalf of common folks and settle their debts, based on whatever they could actually pay. He took a small cut for his role, and he saved that money, which helped him buy into the Douglas bank. He also dealt in farm land for a time. It’s true: Maynard Dunlap knew how to make a buck. But he had to. He had a large family.

As teenagers, the boys would go down to the bank in Douglas and help Maynard post the books every night. This arrangement went smoothly, at least until a couple of them got up the nerve to complain to their father about their wages. Maynard fired the boys on the spot. When they went home and told their mother Helen about what had happened, she made them go back and beg for their jobs. Maynard heard their plea and rehired them—at a lower wage than before.

“I was in high school,” recalled Jay Dunlap, a twin to brother Paul. “I should have known better.”