This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Every community seems to have one man so important he is known only by his first two initials. Talk about "F.W." or "J.J." and cartoon images spring to mind of a fat and somewhat sinister millionaire tycoon, a babe on each arm, lighting a “seegar” with a fifty-dollar bill.
In Davenport, just across the river, that man was V. O. Figge. He was both a banker and a millionaire, but the rest of the story soars high above the world of cartoons. There were no babes.
Vivian Otto Figge was a young bank examiner for the State of Iowa in 1932 when he was invited to become vice-president of Davenport's American Commercial Savings Bank, the largest bank in Iowa before it had failed in 1931 as the Depression worsened. The bank was reorganized as the Davenport Bank and Trust. For the next sixty years, until he retired at the age of 91, V. O., as vice president, president, and then chairman of the board, steered his bank steadfast and true—to fifty-seven consecutive years of increased profits. He was a hands-on banker, preferring to take a desk on the main floor of his bank rather than use his fancy upstairs office.
V. O. could have had his babes, even at the age of 91. He chose rather to serve his community. "We live in a world not only of financial insolvency" he once wrote, "but one on the verge of moral bankruptcy as well." Against these tides, he gave time and money. He served as chairman of many fund drives. His money remodeled his church, Sacred Heart Cathedral, several years ago. He donated the ten-story Kahl Office Building in Davenport to a local community college running out of space. A donation of one and one half million dollars sparked and fund drive for the Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science in Davenport and resulted in a new V. O. Figge Natural Science Wing.
Cancer claimed V. O. a short time ago at the age of 95. If all of us who had benefitted from his generosity had attended his funeral at Sacred Heart, every community within fifty miles of Rock Island would have been empty.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
