Greene County native steps down after varied career of engineering, ag, banking
Story and Photo By David Blanchette
A familiar face in the agricultural lending business will retire February 28 and he intends to replace banking work with fishing, golfing and working on classic cars.
Dan Henry, the vice president and commercial/ag loan officer at the Chapin branch of CNB Bank & Trust, also turns 65 on his retirement date, and thought it was a good time to “get back to some of my favorite hobbies.”
“I haven’t been able to go fishing for several years and I love playing golf, although it doesn’t always love me,” joked Henry. “I’ve also bought project cars over the years, fixed them up and sold them, and I’ll probably do that. Plus, my wife Jessica and I have some experience at doing stained glass.”
It’s only fitting that Henry doesn’t intend to sit still during retirement because that’s how his busy career has gone, from electrical work to running a seed business to banking, where his greatest joy has been “meeting new people and new customers and helping them with their financing and banking needs,” he said.
Henry, who lives in White Hall, was born and raised in Roodhouse and went to school to study industrial electronics. After graduation in 1981, he was hired by Baldwin Associates to help build the Clinton Nuclear Power Station and was quickly promoted to an electrical field engineer.
“My job was to go out and look at what was being built and installed and if there was a problem, to redesign it and submit the changes for approval,” Henry recalled. “Then the blueprints went out into the job site with my changes. I really enjoyed that job.”
After about five years on the job, the nuclear power plant was built and Henry didn’t want to apply for a permanent job there, so he returned to Greene County in 1986 and went to work for Cloverleaf Feed Company, the family business in Roodhouse. Henry bought into the business and spent about 15 years there before his career path “took another about face” when the Farmers State Bank of Pittsfield asked if he would work at a new branch they were opening in White Hall.
“They didn’t need anybody with experience, they said they would teach me banking from the ground up,” Henry said. “They were looking for somebody involved in the local agriculture scene in Greene County to help bring in new clientele.”
Henry started his banking career in 2001 as assistant vice president and loan officer. The White Hall branch was small enough that he was able to handle all types of loans and helped to build the bank’s local business. Then in 2015 Henry had the opportunity to work for CNB Bank & Trust in Jacksonville.
“During the application process, I pointed out all of the relatives and business contacts I already had in Jacksonville, coupled with my 14 years of experience in White Hall,” Henry said. “They hired me, and I’ve been with CNB ever since.”
When CNB merged with Jacksonville Savings Bank, the latter’s Chapin branch came with the merger. Henry moved to CNB’s Chapin facility in 2019 and worked with Paul Miller, who has since retired, to handle the branch’s large agriculture banking portfolio.
Henry has seen some major changes in the agriculture lending industry over the past two and a half decades.
“Early on it was a lot of small, mom-and-pop farms that would do grain and livestock and not need to handle a whole lot of money to make a living,” Henry said. “It has evolved into bigger farms that handle a lot more money.”
Henry said agricultural banking now involves a lot of equipment financing plus operating lines of credit, which allow customers to purchase the things they need to plant and harvest the crop and then pay the bank back after the crop is sold. Land purchasing is another major ag expense.
“When I first started in banking, top class soils were in the $2,000 to $3,000 per acre price range, and now they’re up around $20,000,” Henry said. “There is also a volumetric increase in how much a farmer has to put into the ground, so they have less and less capital of their own to tap into to be able to do that.”
Henry likes the fact that the Chapin branch is still small enough that he can work with all sorts of loans, including commercial and consumer lending. Still, nearly 25 years ago, he never envisioned that he would be involved in banking for so long.
“I figured I could do it for a few years and maybe something else would come up, but it didn’t,” Henry said.
Henry has been involved in the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce and has enjoyed being part of the Chamber’s Contact Club because he gets to network and meet new people outside of the bank. But Henry is going to step back from those types of commitments after retirement because he’ll no longer be making the daily commute between White Hall and Jacksonville or Chapin.
Henry feels fortunate that his children and grandchildren all live nearby, and he hopes to see more of them after retirement. He has a daughter, Nikki Henry (Matt) Whalen; a son, Brett (Brittany) Henry; and five grandchildren.
Henry comes from a family of six siblings and his wife, Jessica, is from a family of seven, so “family gatherings are quite large.”
Henry is happy to give advice to young people who are just starting out in the career field based on his multifaceted work experience.
“Keep your options open, get something at first that will pay you pretty well and keep your interest,” Henry said. “Then hopefully something more along the lines of what you want will come along.”
