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20th Anniversary Edition   Sunday, October 30, 1977   16 Pages

Acadia Savings And Loan History

Acadia Savings and Loan Association is observing its twentieth birthday this week with pride in already reaching more than 40 million dollars in assets to become the leading association in Acadia Parish in both savings accounts on deposit and home loans.

A special registration is being conducted in the Associations lobby every day this week with a drawing scheduled for Friday at 3:00 p.m. to select the Lucky Acadian who will win an all-expense paid trip to any city in America selected by the winner and the winner's chosen companion for the trip.

A free gift (as long as they last) will be given everyone who enters the Association lobby. It is a Nite-Lite attachment for the telephone, non-electrical, that glows in the dark and they have been specially made to give the telephone numbers of the Sheriff's Office, Police Department, Acadian Ambulance and Fire Department. Individual ones are made for patrons from Iota, Rayne and Crowley, with appropriate telephone numbers for each locality.

Acadia Savings has outstripped all other association in Acadia Parish to set an all-time record for speedy growth. In fact, in its fifth year it forged to the leadership among Acadia Parish associations and has lengthened its lead with each succeeding year.

Its founding has been reviewed this week. The story is indeed interesting and inspiring.

There had been talk about organizing a new savings and loan association in Acadia Parish for a number of years. In fact, there were several different attempts to launch a new home loan and thrift institution — all with success.

For one thing, the usual ratio of associations to population is

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question. But a group headed by Judge Edmund M. Reggie and Senator W.J. Cleveland, now deceased, began to take a new and closer look at the matter.

Judge Reggie, acting as attorney for the group, sought an application form from the Federal Home Loan Bank in Little Rock, Arkansas, headquarters for this savings and loan region. He was quickly told that chances for chartering a new association in Acadia Parish were nil.

But the matter did not stop there. "We figured that the Federal authorities had to be convinced that there was a serious economic need for a new association here," Reggie said, while being interviewed about the history of the Acadia Savings and Loan Association, "so I set out to develop a comprehensive economic study of the parish, taking into consideration income, savings, home building and family growth."

"I went to my Alma Mater, University of Southwestern Louisiana, and contacted my former economics teacher with whom I kept in contact after finishing USL, Dr. William Phillips, and I asked him to help us with the kind of in-depth study that was needed," Reggie added.

Dr. Phillips, head of the economics department at Southwestern until his tragic death in an automobile mishap, agreed to do the study and all signs were "Go."

Judge Reggie did all the fact gathering that could be mustered here and Dr. Phillips translated those figures plus his own research into a pattern that would show whether Acadia Parish had a real need for another savings and loan association.

"Some of the material was extremely difficult to obtain," Reggie declared, "particularly home mortage records that ware needed to establish money source used for financing