NEW YORK - The historian David McCullough, the keynote speaker for the opening general session at the American Bankers Association's convention here Sunday, said he has a "great abiding affection for small-town bankers."
Without the help of a banker on Martha's Vineyard 23 years ago, Mr. McCullough said, he might not have finished "The Path Between the Seas."
Mr. McCullough said he had figured it would take him three years to complete the book, which chronicled the construction of the Panama Canal.
But in 1981, after three years of writing, "The Path" was only halfway done and his savings were gone, and "a half-finished book isn't worth anything," the author said.
He said his wife, Rosalie, had warned him about the family's shaky finances, but he told her he was too busy writing to do anything about the situation.
So she took matters in her own hands and consulted Bill Honey at Martha's Vineyard National Bank. He asked her how much money she needed, "she stated a figure, and that was that," Mr. McCullough said. "There were no forms to fill out, or anything."
The author said he bumped into Mr. Honey a few years later.
"He told me people had been coming up to him" since the interview "and saying, 'You never did anything like that for me.' "
