Lebanon
Stephanie Nelson said she hears that description of her father all the time. As the longtime president of Mascoma Savings Bank, Cole typically interacted with people in his business attire.
But at home, Nelson said, he was anything but business.
Cole, who was born into a Lebanon farm family, could often be found in overalls while working on projects around the house, riding his motorcycle or playing with his children and grandchildren.
He was easily just as comfortable in beach attire near the ocean, or patrolling the ski slopes in winter gear. Outside of work, Nelson said, Cole was known to dress for fun.
“He really did just have a zest for living,” she said. “He was a really hands-on kind of guy.”
Family and friends say the former banker was well regarded for his technical mind and problem solving skills. But he also was known to collect stories and jokes, and rarely passed up on the chance to chat up someone new.
Anyone caught in an elevator, taxi or restaurant with Cole was subject to long chats and questioning.
“He wanted to know, he really did,” Nelson said of her father’s curious mind.
Cole’s humility, sharp mind and love of family are just some of the qualities family members say they’ll miss after he died in his sleep on Jan. 4, 2018, at 93.
“The memories of his active and full life will live far beyond his years on earth,” said Marjorie Cole, his wife of 67 years.
Cole was born on Oct. 29, 1924 at Elm Tree Farm on Meriden Road in Lebanon to Forrest and Lillian Cole.
A fourth-generation farmer, he was born in the same room as his grandfather and father before him, Nelson said.
“He was a very humble person partly because as a kid, he was an outsider,” she said. “He lived out on the farm. He did not live in the village.”
When Cole was in school, his family farm was too far away to walk home for lunch, his daughter said. So when most children returned to their families at mid-day, those who lived on the outlying farms stayed behind.
And after school, Cole would put on his overalls and go out delivering milk with his father.
Cole graduated from Lebanon High School in 1942, and studied for one semester at the University of New Hampshire before joining the U.S. Army to serve in World War II.
He was 18 years old on the morning in 1943 when he kissed his mother goodbye, shook his father’s hand and left Lebanon for Fort Devens in Massachusetts.
“Only after I became a parent could I imagine the pain they suffered that day, and for many days after,” Cole told the Valley News in 2004.
In the Pacific front, he served as an on-shore spotter, directing naval artillery as part of a joint Army/Navy task force. He saw combat several times, but described his service as relatively safe behind infantry lines.
“I would not swap my World War II experiences for all the money in the world. However, I would not wish it upon mine or anyone else’s children or grandchildren, anytime, anywhere,” Cole said.
He returned to UNH after the war. And it was there that he met Marjorie Fletcher, a native of Melrose, Mass. The two were married on Jan. 28, 1950, a few months before Cole graduated with a degree in business administration.
Cole was already working as a teller at Mascoma Savings Bank before graduation, however. He started working at the then-Hanover Street building during summer breaks, and was hired full-time in 1950.
At the time, the bank employed just two officers and three tellers with deposits totaling $3 million. By the time Cole retired as bank president in 1986, bank deposits had grown to more than $100 million, and a new facility was being planned for Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction.
“His whole idea of being a banker was to help people get their homes,” Stephanie Nelson said, adding her father would often ride his motorcycle out to neighboring towns to look at houses for clients.
Cole also partnered with Harold LaValley, the founder of LaValley Building Supply, according to Dick Nelson, his son-in-law. Together, the team would visit Upper Valley residents, figuring out ways to build and finance new homes.
“He is responsible for hundreds and hundreds of homes,” Dick Nelson said.
Inside the bank, Cole was known for his integrity and knowledge of both financial regulations and new banking techniques.
“Reuben was just a magnificent individual, very fair and equitable in all of his dealings,” said Stephen Christy, the bank’s president from 1990 to 2017.
Cole hired Christy for a teller position in 1973. Christy remembers walking in, asking for an application and spending almost an hour with the bank president.
“I was pretty impressed with the fact that someone as busy as he must be would take the time to spend almost an hour with some bumpkin who walked off the street and was looking for a job,” Christy said.
Cole was known to keep a copy of New Hampshire banking laws on his desk, and was an authoritative figure at the bank, he said.
He also helped to usher the bank into the digital age.
When Christy came to Mascoma Savings Bank, tellers were still expected to balance its books by hand at the end of business every night. But programmable calculators were starting to enter the market, he said, and Cole embraced them.
Those calculators came with manuals the size of dictionaries, Christy remembers, and Cole would take them home for days to learn how the new technology worked.
“So Reuben figured out how to do all this stuff that made things better for our customers and employees,” Christy said.
Cole was also responsible for building up the bank’s financial health. In the 1960s, the area was still struggling from mill and manufacturing jobs moving away, Christy said, and the Upper Valley was seen as a difficult place to bank.
But when Interstate 89 came through more than 50 years ago, he said, everything changed. The area saw technical manufacturing and health care jobs grow, which was in turn accompanied by 15 percent annual growth at the bank.
“He not only experienced that growth and managed that growth” but Cole also increased Mascoma’s standing to become one of the healthiest banks in New Hampshire, according to Christy.
To his coworkers, Cole was someone who could be turned to in times of need, said Lloyd Bennett, who worked at the bank from 1963 to 1994.
“If there was a problem, you could go to Reuben and if he did not have the answer, he would get it,” Bennett said, adding Cole also was very personable with customers.
“He would walk with almost anybody who came in the door,” he said.
Although her father was busy with work, Stephanie Nelson said, he was always home for supper.
“And when he came home for supper, he would play with me,” she said. “He made the time.”
Nelson said the family was always active during childhood, taking trips to the Seacoast, Niagara Falls, Washington, D.C. and New York City. Cole also took his children on motorcycle rides.
“We didn’t sit around very much,” she said. “We didn’t watch that much TV. We were always on the go.”
Cole encouraged his children to pursue their own activities. For Stephanie Nelson, that was skiiing and other sports.
“They took me to ski meet, ski meet, ski meet, every single weekend in the winter,” she said of her parents. “Mummy would be keeping the gates and making sure people were going through the gates and Dad would be timing.”
An avid pilot, he paid for flight lessons for his son, Fletcher. Cole believed that teens would smoke and drink to appear adult, and so in exchange for a promise by his son not to take up the vices, he encouraged Fletcher to fly.
“Well, not many adults can fly an airplane and if you want to feel grown up, I’ll pay for your flying lessons and you can do something that very few adults can do,” Fletcher Cole remembers his father saying.
Cole would never use the label feminist to describe himself, Nelson said. However, he “was really ahead of his time as far as his attitude toward women and gender roles,” she said.
Cole encouraged Marjorie to pursue her own career as a secretary for Dartmouth College ski coaches.
“He and my mom were really a team,” said Nelson, who went on to describe how the two shared housework.
Cole also encouraged Nelson’s “tomboy ways” and had no qualms when his daughter took a job as a carpenter’s apprentice out of college. At the bank, he also promoted woman tellers to executive positions, she said.
Cole put his technical skills to use not just at the bank but for family too, building a cottage with his brother in the Maine coastal community of Ocean Park in 1958. He also designed Stephanie and Dick Nelson’s Lebanon home in 1984.
“He took things into account like solar orientation, passive solar gain, building the house into the land,” said Dick Nelson, who publishes the magazine Builder + Architect. “He was aware of all these things even before the architects were.”
When he wasn’t at work or with family, Cole was volunteering.
He was a ski instructor and coach at Snowcrest and later Whaleback Mountain, where he was also on the ski patrol.
Cole also helped found the Mascoma Savings Bank Foundation, and served on the boards for Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, the Carter Community Building Association, the Grafton County Senior Citizens Council, the Boy Scouts of America, the Lebanon Outing Club and Planned Parenthood of the Upper Valley.
He served on the Lebanon Board of Assessors for 20 years, and was a trustee of the First Congregational Church of Lebanon for five decades.
“He enjoyed people,” Stephanie Nelson said. “He used to embarrass me like crazy when I was a kid because he would talk to anybody. Anywhere you went, he would know your life story by the time you were gone.”
Cole continued many of those commitments later into his life. He also devoted much time to his four grandchildren.
“I remember reading Thornton Burgess books, and playing Uncle Wiggly and learning how to play pool,” wrote Andrea Nelson, Cole’s granddaughter, in a letter to Marjorie shortly after his death.
“I remember riding on papa’s motorcycle and setting up elaborate railroads with him on the living room floor,” she wrote.
Both Reuben and Marjorie Cole were present at every birthday, Thanksgiving, 4th of July and Christmas, Andrea Nelson wrote. And the couple enjoyed hosting their grandchildren at the cottage during the summer.
“I am so appreciative of our family that has been shaped by yours and Papa’s values,” she wrote. “I love you so much and know that I have been blessed to have gotten Reuben and Marjorie Cole as my grandparents.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.