When I moved to Washington in 1969, I opened a checking account at Riggs Bank, then the largest Washington based bank, because they had a branch right next to where I worked. Riggs dated from the 1830s and was perhaps the most prominent bank in the city, until it got embroiled in a number of scandals, including aiding Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in hiding his money, enabling some of the 9/11 terrorists to transfer money, and taking in funds stolen from Equatorial Guinea’s oil revenues. With that, and the resignation of much of its board of directors, Riggs was acquired by PNC National Bank in in 2005, and its branches all became PNC branches.

Now, PNC advertises widely on TV that it has been “brilliantly boring since 1865”. It’s an advertising campaign that I don’t understand at all. Who really wants a boring bank? Yet, considering the last years of Riggs, I guess boring is not necessarily bad.

What’s my point? My point is that our PNC branch, the one near our house, is not really that boring. Let me explain:

Twice this summer, Edie and I have met with officers at the bank in order to move some of our PNC funds into higher interest paying programs. First, in July, with the Assistant Manager, and today with the Branch Manager. Our conversations were far from boring.

Meeting with someone at your branch bank doesn’t sound very exciting, I know. When we met with the assistant manager in late June or early July, I expected just a quick meeting and a few signatures. Call it my prejudice, but I just don’t expect people who work at banks to be that interesting.

We learned that the assistant manager, who speaks with an accent, was born and raised in Trinidad. I don’t remember the details of his life, as he told it, but I remember it was interesting enough, and I also remember that he told us he had two children and that one of them (the younger, and a son) was going to start college in the fall. I asked him where his son was going to go to college. Again, my prejudice wins out. I assumed he was going to give me the name of a local community college, or perhaps he would tell me it was the University of Maryland. But, casually, he said: “He’s going to Stanford.” I then asked him about his older child, his daughter. As I remember, she is at Duke. They were both very serious kids, with a lot of promise. How far can an apple fall from a tree?

Today, we met with the manager of the branch. I have seen him over the years time and time again, and even have sat down with him a couple of times, but never really had a conversation. He also speaks with an accent, less pronounced, but clearly an accent. I asked him where he was from, and it turns out that he was raised in Guiana, that his mother was from Guiana and that his father was Scottish, in the British military, and stationed in Guiana, when it gained its independence. They stayed in Guiana, his father became Minister of Education, and his mother a member of the Guiana foreign ministry and, I think, he said Ambassador to Barbados, where they lived for three years. His father, once he retired as minister of education, moved to Montserrat, where he became principal of the only high school.

He also told us about his nephew who, when he was 18, not many years ago, was a student at the University of Maryland who was living with his uncle while in school, and who had a congenital condition which suddenly required him to get a liver transplant on an emergency basis. He was hospitalized at Johns Hopkins, when a 22 year old woman died of a brain aneurysm and whose organs were available for transplant. The operation was a success. They knew the donor was a 22 year old woman, but nothing else.

Until one day, the manager got a call from a good friend who told him he was having dinner at someone’s house and that their daughter had died and they had told them that her liver was donated to an 18 year old boy! Coincidence? Just wait. It turned out that the donor’s family was also from Guiana, and that they lived just about three blocks from the manager’s sister back there.

To add to the coincidence, when the nephew and his new liver came home from the hospital, and his uncle asked him what he would like for his first meal at home, he said that he would like a fish curry. Apparently, they had a lot of curries in that house (Guiana’s cuisine has a lot of curry), so it wasn’t surprising that he asked for a curry. But a fish curry? That is something they never had.

A short time later, the donor’s parents wanted to meet the 18 year old who had their daughter’s liver and they came over to their house. As they were leaving, the donor’s mother said to the boy (I paraphrase): “When you feel better, let me know. I am going to come over and bring you some fish curry. That was my daughter’s favorite meal.”

And they say PNC is boring.

By the way (a mini-digression), ever wonder about the PNC name? PNC itself resulted from the merger of two banks, one called Pittsburgh National Corporation, and one called Provident National Corporation, both known as PNC, who merged in 1983. The current ad campaign says that PNC has been “brilliantly boring since 1865”. I thought you might want to know that Provident National Corporation, headquartered in Philadelphia by the way, was formed in 1865. But Pittsburgh National had been around since the 1840s.

I have to conclude that the Pittsburgh bank was not at all boring, but the Philadelphia bank was, and that when they merged in 1983, it was the Philadelphia culture that survived. Of course, based on the fans of its sports teams, you would never accuse Philadelphians of being boring. Another mystery, I guess.