During her senior year of high school, Mary Anne Jordan decided she wanted to work in a bank after she graduated.
Her parents, however, wanted her to go to college to become a teacher.
“My father looked at me and said, ‘Mary Anne, you can’t work in a bank. You’ve spent half of your life grounded because you wouldn’t do your math,’” she said. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t have to do math in a bank. I like people, and I can count money. They have machines.’”
She compromised and said she would go to business college after graduating from Salem High School in 1968.
She found a one-year secretarial course at Spencerian Business College in Louisville, Kentucky, where she learned everything from typing to shorthand to debit and credit.
Once she was done there, she went to State Bank of Salem, where her parents had always banked, to fill out paperwork for a job. The woman was set on hiring her until encountering an issue: Jordan was left-handed, and bank drawers and machines are set up for right-handed people.
“I looked at her and I said, ‘I’ve grown up in a right-handed world. I don’t even have a pair of left-handed scissors,’” Jordan said. “She said, ‘I am so sorry. I’ve been looking so forward to this. I promised you a job. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to let you come work here, but you need to keep looking for a job because it won’t work. I’m so sorry, but I’m going to call your mother and tell her what happened.’”
Well, it worked out OK for Jordan because she wound up working there for nine and a half years, going from bookkeeper to running proof machines to serving as a teller.
“Believe it or not, this little left-handed girl could run a 10-key proof machine pretty doggone fast and accurately,” she said, smiling.
She then got married and first settled in Vallonia before moving to the city where she was born and her grandparents lived, Seymour, and landing a job with Jackson County Bank.
On Friday, she will wrap up 45 years with that bank, now known as JCBank. A retirement recognition reception is from 2 to 5 p.m. that day at the Jackson Park office at 1200 E. Tipton St., Seymour. The public is invited.
She will then officially be retired after 54 years in banking. She said it was the hardest decision she has ever made.
“I knew 45 years was coming up, and I kind of wanted to do a milestone. I didn’t want to do 46 years, and I knew I wasn’t going to make 50,” the 73-year-old said, smiling. “I think there comes a time when you need to maybe make a change, and I got married in May. This will afford a chance to maybe travel some, but that’s not the reason. I just think you get to a point where you get out while the gettin’ is good.”
Looking back on her start with Jackson County Bank is another humorous story.
State Bank of Salem was closed on Mondays, so a lot of times, Jordan would come to Seymour to spend the day with her grandfather. One Monday, she walked into the downtown bank to set up an interview for the following Monday.
She still recalls what she was wearing: Shorts, a pink-and-white-striped top and flip-flops. A man came up to her and said, “Can I help you?”
“‘I was just wondering who I might speak to to set up an interview for employment,’” she told him. “He said, ‘Well, I’ll talk to you.’ I said, ‘No, no, I’m not dressed. I just wanted to see if I could set up an interview for maybe next Monday when I’m off.’ He goes, ‘No, come on in.’ Turned out, it was the president of the bank. He took me into his office and I sat down and I thought, ‘Oh my!’”
He asked her some questions before having her meet someone else.
“‘I’m not dressed for this,’” she told him. “‘Oh, you’re fine. Don’t worry about that.’ They offered me a job.”
So what helped her land the job?
“I think it was probably the outfit. It was just so sweet,’” Jordan said, smiling.
She started at Jackson County Bank on Aug. 8, 1978, as a teller. In October, she moved to the Jackson Park location as a teller and customer service. She later was promoted to manager and became an officer of the bank.
In 1987, a branch opened in downtown Brownstown, and Jordan went there to fill in for someone for a couple of weeks and wound up staying until 1994.
It began as a loan production office before converting to a deposit-taking branch, and in the late ’80s, a bank was built at Commerce and Main streets.
“It was great. I loved that down there, and I loved the people. They were so kind,” Jordan said. “They would come in and go, ‘You’re the new lady banker.’ … You didn’t have a lot of women in leadership back then.”
Back at Jackson Park, she remained in her manager role and also later became an area manager, covering the branches in Jackson, Jennings and Scott counties.
In 2020, lenders in the branches became specific to doing loans that had real estate as collateral, such as mortgage and home equity loans, while car loans went to the branch managers. Jordan became an assistant vice president, senior retail real estate lending officer.
“Real estate loans are a lot more complicated and a lot more twists and turns — partners, Realtors, title companies. There are just a lot of moving parts on those, and you don’t let just anybody touch them, so Mary Anne had the ability to do those and was experienced in those,” said her supervisor, Andy Applewhite, senior vice president, mortgage and consumer lending.
The role was perfect for someone like Jordan who likes working with people.
“I love people. That’s just what I like,” she said. “This is what I have said for years: My customers have become my friends, a lot of my friends become my customers, but the people I work with have become my family.”
In retirement, she said people is what she will miss.
“This is going to be very, very difficult because I’m so much a people person,” she said.
Applewhite said Jordan’s connection level is next level.
“It’s amazing how many people she knows and who they are related to and all this because she has helped all of them,” he said. “It’s almost always a positive situation.”
Many times over the last few months, Applewhite said he has told Jordan she has more than earned the right to retire.
“She’s just going out on top,” he said. “It’s almost like a really good athlete that wins something big and then they retire. She has excelled all the way through. … It has been gratifying to see on the inside how she does it. She does it well. Even 45 years later, she does it really well.”
He said her retirement is bittersweet.
“I am sorry to see her go, but boy, I am super happy for her,” Applewhite said. “She’ll be an ambassador for the bank after she leaves. I know her well enough to know her care level for her customers and for the well-being of the bank, and all that is always as high as you could imagine anybody could have.”
Looking back on her career, Jordan said she is so very blessed.
“Not every day is perfect, but it has never seemed like, ‘I’ve got to go to work,’” she said. “In me, it was ‘I get to go to work.’ It’s not a got to. I get to, not got to. That’s just the way I looked at it.”
If you go
What: Retirement recognition reception for Mary Anne Jordan, celebrating her 54 years in banking, including 45 years with Jackson County Bank
When: 2 to 5 p.m. Friday
Where: JCBank Jackson Park office, 1200 E. Tipton St., Seymour
Who: Public is invited
Information: Call 812-524-4425