Cheryl Thomas has not been one who, as the old saying goes, “lets grass grow under her feet.” The retired banking executive began working part-time at age 15, went full time in the banking business just two days after graduating from high school in 1962, then married six months later. And, for 58 years, she never slowed down.
Thomas will celebrate something of a milestone Jan. 1. She was born New Year’s Day in 1945.
“I got married on Dec. 30, so that killed Christmas, New Year’s, and birthday,” she quipped in an interview last week. “I was young and stupid,” she laughed. “Jerald Thomas swept me off my feet.”
The teen obviously didn’t let age stand in her way of beginning her career at the Bank of Gray; nor did it keep her from tying the knot.
“I lacked two days being 18,” she recalled. “Mother had to sign for me to get married.”
Thomas said her future husband was interested in another girl in high school.
“He didn’t pay me any attention,” she claimed. “Then he started coming in the bank, and I started waiting on him. He started talking, then he called me, and one thing led to another.”
Thomas explained that they started dating in August, and he gave her a ring in October.
“When I say he swept me off my feet, he literally did.”
Jerald kept pushing her to marry him sooner than later.
“I told him I wanted a June wedding, the next year, and he kept on and on at me. Finally, I said ‘ok!’” They got married at what was referred to then as Gray Baptist Church.
“We had the cheapest wedding anybody ever had,” she confessed. “It cost $100, and that included my dress. We put up one thing of flowers because the church was still decorated for Christmas. Our reception, we had a cake and punch.”
The couple had three daughters, twins Loray and Lorraine, and Leigh, and they would have been married 62 years this December, except for a tragedy. Jerald died of a heart attack in July of 1992 at age of 50. He was actually in the waiting room of a medical facility when he keeled over.
Asked about her childhood, Thomas shared that her family moved to Jones County in 1952, and she graduated from high school 10 years later.
“My only claim to fame at JCHS was that I could type 120 words a minute on a manual typewriter,” she stated, recalling that she competed at a literary event at Georgia College in Milledgeville … without success.
“I’m not good at listening to instructions,” Thomas acknowledged. “The teacher said double-space, and I didn’t, so I was eliminated.
“I should have been paying attention. I still have that problem,” she acknowledged. “My daughters always tell me ‘but you weren’t listening, mother, you’re always thinking.’” Thomas started working early in life, first at The Jones County News while a junior in high school, then the following year in the office of long-time Superior Court Clerk Jack Roberts. She continued working there part-time until the twins were born in 1965.
“Every warranty deed, deed to secure debt, and court case had to be typed by hand,” Thomas said.
She recalled that when a local quarry was blown up, with a casualty resulting, a court case ensued.
“Kitty Roberts and I typed the 700-page court case, then somebody wanted a copy, and we had to type it again.”
The retiree said business in the banking world was conducted the same way when she was hired as a teller/ bookkeeper.
“We didn’t have any kind of machines,” she recalled. “When you balanced your teller drawer every day, you added up all your checks, all the deposits, and anything else you had taken in, like loan payments. You added your deposits to the balance you had the day before, you subtracted what you paid out, and you should have that much cash left in your drawer.”
Front-page news
Thomas had been working for just over five years when she made the front page of The Macon Telegraph. The Bank of Gray was robbed.
“That’s something you never forget,” she said without hesitation.
Thomas recalled that there were three guys that came in the bank and one waiting in the car behind the building.
“When they walked around the counter, they had an automatic pistol,” she said. “They demanded money.
“I was trying to point to the cash drawer. I said ‘it’s that one!’ I was shaking so bad I didn’t know what to do.”
Thomas said the men made the women lie on the floor, and they went out the back door to leave in a car that had been stolen off a car lot in Macon. She said they were apprehended the next day in Atlanta when a youngster overheard them talking and told his parents, who in turn called the police.
“One of them worked at Sears Roebuck; one was just out of the service,” she said, noting that there was a trial, with convictions and prison sentences resulting from the robbery of over $25,000.
Thomas, Sandra Sumner and Sue Thomas were photographed on the scene.
“I can’t believe they put that picture on the front page of the paper,” the soon-to-be great-grandmother said last week.
Bank sold, successor closed
Thomas said she believes she is the only female vice president of the Bank of Gray, which was sold to Security Bank Corp. in May of 2003. At that time, she was senior vice president as well as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, BSA Officer, IT Security Officer and corporate secretary.
Just over six years after that sale, the FDIC closed all the Security Banks.
“The Bank of Gray was chartered on August 28, 1909,” Thomas noted. “We lacked 35 days being 100 years old. Even though Security Bank of Jones County was still adequately capitalized and we had received a number one rating on our recent FCID exam, we were closed also.”
That closure had severe financial consequences for Thomas. She said she and two others had retirement funds in a policy that was included in bank assets.
“And, we had paid FICA tax on for several years,” she pointed out. “The FDIC took all of it.
“In essence, I worked 40 years without any benefits.”
Thomas said following the closure she worked as a regional operations officer for State Bank for the southern part of the state before she helped Bank of Gray and Security Bank cohorts Thad Childs and Alan Childs open Gray’s Morris Bank branch in 2012.
“We just wanted to know that we could still do the things we had enjoyed doing at the Bank of Gray,” she shared. “We opened it in September of 2012. By 2020, we had the market share of the deposits in Jones County.
“I had worked 58 years in the banking industry, and things were changing rapidly,” Thomas reflected. “It was time for me to go home.”
She retired and did just that, now enjoying seven grandchildren, with that great-grandchild on the way.
Away from the banking world, Thomas attended and taught Sunday School at First Baptist Church of Gray, where she served on the Finance Committee for 23 years. She is a charter member (now an emeritus member) of the Pilot Club and a member of the Oliver Morton Chapter of the DAR as well as the History and Heritage Group.
Thomas shared that she is the third longest term member of First Baptist Church of Gray who was baptized there, behind Marilyn Sauls and Vickie Cobb.
“There are members who are older but were not baptized there,” she explained.
Has she ever thought of remarrying?
“No,” she said quickly. “Thirty years with Jerald Thomas is all I could handle,” she said with a laugh. She then recalled an occasion less than year after his death that Leigh, 15 at the time, was sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed, looking at something. “I said, ‘what are you looking at?’ She said, ‘I’m looking for you a boyfriend.’
“I said, ‘what you looking in?’ She said, ‘The Penny Pincher.’
“I said, ‘I think I can do better than that!’“ Thomas said she has had several guys ask her out but no one she would consider dating. Then, there is her passion for work.
“I married the Bank of Gray when Jerald died,” she said. “It was kind of my salvation because the girls were gone, and Leigh was old enough to drive. I just worked all the time.”
