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home-made cake in the family dining room.
To such a home Joe returned after his year in Arizona. He looked in vain for a bank job, throughout South' em Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. Then Fate, spelled with a capital "F," stepped into his life in the person of the immensely wealthy Landers family from Wisconsin — rich lumber peo' pie who had moved to Springfield and were starting to branch out into other businesses with the new Springfield Bank of Commerce. If he could become associated with the Landers, Joe figured, the connection might ultimately be worth much more than a banker's salary.
HE applied for a job to the bank's cashier, offering to work without pay until he had proved himself. The cashier turned him down. So Joe went directly to "the old man" — to John Landers, the chairman, a strapping-big former-lumberjack turned financier. The bank lacked farm customers; Joe knew every farmer around Springfield and he told Mr. Landers he beheved he could secure many of them as customers. Within two months, covering the countryside in a horse and buggy, Joe brought in so much new business that they gave him a job "inside the bank" — at $50 a month.
Capital "F" for Fate also meant "F" for friendship — because in his new job at the Springfield Bank of Commerce Joe became the closest friend and confidant of young Douglas Landers, the big 250-pound son of the ex-lumberjack. Doug was president of the bank. And Doug's pretty
'n^ October, 1931
wife, Marie, who was the reigning belle of Springfield in those days, was as smart as she was beautiful. The Doug Landers' kitchen became an informal planning headquarters for Landers' enterprises. On long winter evenings — and in summer, spring and fall! — Doug, Marie and Joe would sit in that kitchen — building air castles.
And with Joe on the "inside" as each new Landers "deal" was brought to fruition, it was natural that he should become the treasurer for the many properties which resulted: some thirty-seven different lumber operations; the big Colonial Hotel; the
Sansone Hotel; the Landers Building which dominates the "square" in Springfield; and the Landers Theatre. Knowledge and experience gained in such a variety of enterprises was to be of great value to Joe in later life — ideal preparation for his career as a banker. And in just three years from the time Joe had started work at the Landers bank, sohciting farmer accounts. Landers put Joe in charge of the bank.
Speaking today of his early success and rocket-like rise in Springfield business circles, Joe Williams gives much of the credit to Marie Landers,