BankOwner Profile: Laura Meyer Dick
Fourth-gen Kansas banker builds her own legacy while honoring her father
By Jackie Hilgert
For Laura Meyer Dick, vice president of First Kansas Bancshares, the parent of First National Bank of Hutchinson, Kan., it was both a blessing and a challenge to follow her father into community banking. This past summer, as she leads the charge to restore a vacant historic hotel building in her hometown, Meyer Dick reflected on her career as a fourth-generation community banker, and her late father’s influence on her – and their community.
The Meyer Landmark, as the restoration project is called, is at once a tribute to Nation Meyer and an acknowledgement that what’s best for the community is also what’s in the best interests of its bank. It’s a lesson he drilled into Meyer Dick throughout her life.
“The data on companies lasting through four generations of family is statistically very low,” said Meyer Dick, who became president of the Bank Holding Company Association in January. Staying the course, staying independent, “is important to me and it was important to my dad.”
What she learned as she sorted through boxes of Nation Meyer’s correspondence, was that her father’s love for community banking and supporting downtown never left him throughout his 98 years on earth. It’s a love that’s found new life within her.
“I always loved banking and wanted to go into banking since I was little,” Meyer Dick reflected. She would accompany her father to the downtown bank on Saturday mornings and, over time, come to realize what a benefit the bank was to the community.
Digging through his papers recently, she discovered that he’d sought to buy two entire city blocks to convince civic leaders to build a mall downtown. This had been in the late 1970s when the rise of suburban malls were diverting retail dollars away from Main Street businesses. The plan didn’t work and the result for the town is that its commercial centers remain fragmented.
Bringing people back to downtown is the goal for the restoration of the Meyer Landmark, which will bring much needed housing plus retail and restaurant space to the community of 40,000 people. It also will allow Meyer Dick to honor her father’s legacy and shape her own. Though she bought the building for $150,000, the restoration price tag is $14 million. The project relies on historic preservation grants and tax credits.
A halting start
Meyer Dick worked as a commercial lender at Commerce Bank in Kansas City after college and completed the bank’s management training program. After nearly a decade she opted to become a stay-at-home parent to her three daughters, a decision she does not regret. Returning to FNB Hutch much later, however, Meyer Dick struggled to carve her own identity as a leader.
Nation Meyer, who had started at the bank in 1946, had already burnished a reputation as an effective leader and problem solver. (In the early 1960s, Meyer learned that small banks could not afford mainframe computers. His solution: Build a cooperative where banks could share technology resources. That cooperative still exists: Hutchinson-based DCI.). While Meyer encouraged his daughter to take the lead on initiatives, she found that others had grown too accustomed to seeking out her father. In their estimation, he was the leader and she was his daughter.
Meyer Dick laments not getting more leadership training in college. “Anyone can be taught how to underwrite a credit,” she said. Learning how to develop emotional intelligence and how to empower people are critical skills, she said, ones she sought to develop through private coaching.
Meyer Dick joined the BHCA in part to build her network beyond Hutchinson. As the bank approaches its sesquicentennial in 2026, with a strong management team in place, including CEO Troy Hutton who took over in 2020, FNB Hutch is growing its portfolio well beyond Kansas, she said. “We have built out a unique model for a community bank. We have loans in maybe 25 states.”
Some are participations, she said, but not all. In some cases, the participation was the door opened to more business. “We took time to get to know and build relationships with customers,” she said. “So when their bank was sold and they didn’t get the service they were used to, they already had a relationship with us. Our lenders have done a great job reaching out to those customers as soon as their bank sells.”
Meyer Dick is well-connected in Nebraska, where she serves on the board of National Bank of Commerce, and in Minnesota, which she considers a second home. Her family has a lake home near Alexandria, Minn. “I love the Upper Midwest. Going into BHCA leadership just allows me to meet more people.”
Firming a legacy
After Meyer Dick’s father passed away in 2020, FNB Hutch’s CEO authorized a donation to the Hutchinson Community Foundation in Nation Meyer’s honor. “Troy told me, ‘Figure out what your dad would like or how he would want to be remembered,’” Meyer Dick recounted. It made sense to her for the “what” to focus on downtown.
Meyer Dick brainstormed with people at the Hutchinson Community Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. When she suggested the city create a master plan as had been done in Salina, Kan., they laughed. The donation wasn’t substantial enough to reimagine Hutchinson.
But Meyer Dick researched and sought bids for expertise in downtown master planning. With a bid just north of $200,000 in hand, she committed to cover half herself through fundraising if city leaders would pledge the rest. They agreed, and their collective work created the Nation Meyer Memorial Fund.
It was during fundraising outreach when Meyer Dick was nudged to consider redeveloping a decrepit downtown hotel building. She sent her husband, Michael, to look at the building first. He was unimpressed.
“I went in and I saw a vision,” Meyer Dick said. “I saw what it used to look like.” (The building can be seen in the opening and closing scenes of the 1952 film, “Wait ’Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.”)
Revitalized downtowns with rentals built into historic buildings appeal to a younger demographic; these are the same people Meyer Dick thinks Hutchinson needs as workers.
“I did some research, got the Chamber involved, and they introduced me to an architect who has quite a bit of experience in state and federal historic tax credits and grants,” Meyer Dick said. She also hired a developer to help her navigate the myriad nuances of historic preservation, including the tax implications to her personally.
“I'm a banker by trade, so I did the spreadsheet and underwrote it like a banker would and made sure it was bankable,” Meyer Dick said. “There are still a lot of risks in renovating this. I tell people I have two goals. One is to get it finished and for it to be a great community asset. The other is to not lose my retirement.”
Reconstruction is slated for completion in late 2026. “It’s a beautiful building,” Meyer Dick said. “Even though it's 100 years old, it is sturdy.”
While the project isn’t huge, “it really will make a difference in downtown,” she said, which puts it at the heart of how she remembers her father: “He put ‘community’ right up there with our family. He said, ‘The community has given our family a lot over four generations and we need to make sure we give back to the community.’ I remember him saying that a lot.”
After all, community bankers are driven to pull people and resources together to make projects work, to fill needs, to find solutions. So it is with Meyer Dick. “We need housing,” she said. “Housing will help bring young people back, and that will help with economic development, and recruiting companies to come and build in Hutchinson.”