NCUA Chairman Dennis Dollar did his best Paul Harvey with one of those "Now you know the rest of the story" stories at GAC here.
Dollar has long been an admirer of Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monahan. A classic American rags-to-riches story, in the early 1960s Monahan bought a pizza parlor called Dominick's in the Detroit area for $1,400 and turned it into the multi-million-dollar, global success story that it is today.
But as much as Dollar said he admired Monahan's tale of triumph, it wasn't until a recent meeting that he said he learned of some important details. Dollar said he was recently in the lobby of the Washington Hilton when he noticed that Monahan, who is now very active in faith-based initiatives, was sitting nearby. After introducing himself, he said Monahan responded by asking what Dollar did for a living, with the chairman responding that he helped oversee credit unions.
Monahan then shared with Dollar how he had come to buy his first pizza restaurant at a time when pizzas were delivered only as a means of enticing people to come and eat at the restaurant. Monahan, of course, saw the value in making deliveries the strength of his pizza operation. In the early 1960s, Monahan and his brother pooled their money and came up with $500 to buy the pizza place, but the man who owned Dominick's pizza parlor wanted $1,400 for it. Being $900 short of the purchase price, Monahan had to borrow the rest of the funds, and he shared with Dollar the largely unknown piece of the Domino's story. That $900 loan? He got it from his credit union.
