15 minutes with Don Overmyer

What year did you graduate from Bluffton High School?

I graduated in 1976

What are you doing these days and where do you live?
I am a Vice President with Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles. Given the magic of technology, however, I actually live in Seattle (where I have now been for 11 years) and telecommute to my Los Angeles office.

Tell us about your work.
I manage a team of 12 analysts working in large corporate structured finance, all of whom are located in Los Angeles except for 2 in Dallas and 2 in Chicago.

While I am able to telecommute from Seattle, I typically spend one full week per month in our Los Angeles office and one week per month working in the field with one of my staff members while they are visiting our clients which are located nationwide.

My team helps to structure the "out of the box" complicated loans that rely heavily on the borrowers' accounts receivable, inventory, machinery and equipment, and intellectual property. It has been an interesting job, and over the years I have had the opportunity to meet with many diverse companies and their management teams. Some of the companies are very well known and others are known only regionally.

The size of the loans made by my division ranges from $30 Million to nearly $1 Billion. The larger loans, however, are participated out to other banks including Chase, PNC, Bank of America, Comerica and US Bank.

I understand there's lots of travel. Tell us about that.

Over the years between my work when I lived in Boston (I was there 12 years) and my years working in Seattle and Los Angeles, I have been fortunate enough to travel to every continent in the world except for Africa and Antarctica.

Most of this has been for work related travel except for South America where I have friends in Argentina and Uruguay. I have worked overseas with the foreign subsidiaries of our direct borrowers here in the United States when these foreign subsidiaries were parties to the various loan agreements. While this travel has taken me to many countries, my most frequent travel has been to England, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong.

What's it like for a small-town Bluffton boy living in Seattle?

I love living in Seattle. It is a very friendly city and the scenery is amazing. From my house I can see two different mountain ranges (Cascades and Olympics), Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, the Space Needle and the downtown Seattle skyline.

While the weather is at times rainy, the wettest season is in the winter, and the rain is easier to navigate than the snow storms I used to encounter when I lived in New England. I still love coming home to Bluffton to visit, as I believe Bluffton is very unique and was a great place to grow up.

Recently I was working with one of my staff members at an account in Fort Wayne, and one evening I brought him to Bluffton for one of my mother's great home-cooked dinners. He grew up in a tough section of Los Angeles, and he was amazed at what a nice town Bluffton was. Needless to say he has been talking to everybody in our Los Angeles office about what a great town I came from in Ohio.

In your travels have you ever bumped in to any one from Bluffton?
I used to work with an account in Phoenix, and as it turned out this account was in the business of selling and developing building sites in the Fountain Hills section of Phoenix where Reldon Shirich and his wife had their business. Reldon was well known to my client, as he often delivered freshly baked cinnamon rolls to their offices.

Consequently I often saw Reldon while I was working at this account about 10 years ago. Otherwise I have not encountered anybody specifically from Bluffton while on my business travels, but I have ran into other clients of mine. I once ran into a customer from Minnesota on a bus in Australia, and I ran into a customer from Miami once when I was in Paris.

Years ago, while I was a student in Paris I spent a lot of time on the weekends with Wally Geiger (from Pandora) and his family while they were missionaries in France. They did a lot to help make me feel a bit less homesick.

Do you keep in touch with any of your BHS classmates?
I keep in very close touch with Denny and Jane Edinger. We go all the way back to our year in Kindergarten, and our class picture shows us all sitting on the floor near each other.

I also keep in touch as best as I can with Jed Marquart. I often come across other former classmates during my visits home as I try to get back to Bluffton two or three times each year for visits, and the two Dr. Yoders (Alan and Mark) are still my optometrists.

How many radio stations do you have on Pandora Radio?
I don't have a specific station saved on Pandora, but I do have the Classic Rock Genius programmed.

Seen any good (or lousy) movies lately? Which one?
Hmmm...one of the good movies I saw was Avatar at the IMAX theater in 3 D...really enjoyed it. A bad movie I saw just this week was the Immortals in 3D....I'd take a pass on it!

When someone asks you where you grew up, how do you describe Bluffton?

I usually say I'm from northwest Ohio approximately one hour south of Toledo and one hour east of Fort Wayne. Sometimes I'm surprised at the number of people who have heard of Bluffton, largely due to the presence of the university, but if they have not heard of Bluffton then many have at least heard of Lima or Findlay.

Who was your first grade teacher?
Mrs. Forbes