TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OF HELPING - Members of the Board of Directors of the Halifax County Community Federal Credit Union joined with guest speaker Sherman Saunders at Fridays annual banquet. Shown are Morris

Bryant, Rosetta Sydnor Jackson, Executive Director William E. Coleman, Saunders, chairman Aubrey Houghton, Pam Garland and William Fitzgerald.

(pictured to the right) (SOMcL photo)

 

When people come together, good things happen. That's what Danville

Mayor Sherman Saunders told members of the Halifax County Community

Federal Credit Union Friday night as they celebrated the twenty-seventh

annual meeting and banquet in the Leggett auditorium of Halifax

Regional Hospital.

I applaud you for helping others get a start on their future plans,

Saunders told members as he recounted how one financial institution had

enabled him to get a college education. The Mayor related how growing

up on a tobacco farm in the Ringgold community had left his family with

few resources for a college education since he already had one older

brother in college.

We (my mother and father and I) went to six banks to try to borrow the

$600 needed for my tuition and were told by each that they couldn't

lend us the money. Finally we went to the seventh bank ó the old

Schoolfield Bank, now a branch of BB&T ó and they made the loan which

enabled me to go to college.

Institutions such as the credit union, Saunders said make it possible

for people to buy automobiles and homes and to send their children to

college. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things, he explained.

Saunders, who not only serves as Danville's mayor, is also the

Executive Director of the Pittsylvania County Community Action Agency

and is vice chairman of the Danville-Pittsylvania County Regional

Industrial Facilities Authority and chairman of the Board of Directors

of Dan River Business Development Center. He is a past president of the

Danville-Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce.

We are proud to be your neighbor he told the membership, pointing to

recent economic announcements that Danville has enjoyed. Noting that

his area has been hard hit economically with unemployment peaking

there, he said Danville is now looking at some 7,000 new jobs coming

in. Listing the new companies that are moving in from various

countries, he stressed that Danville has become a global community.

The Credit Union currently has some 4,559 members, up by 3.3 percent

over the past year with 7,659 loans made this year. Members elected

three members to serve a two year term on their Board of Directors ó

Pam Garland, Aubrey Houghton and Dennis Stewart with Joe Gasperini

being their alternate. Elected to serve on the Credit Committee were

Frederick Betts, Deloris Suitt and Willie Skipper with Sylvia Hailey

being their alternate.