By the time he moved to the Wisconsin village of McFarland, E. David Locke already had faced a sawed-off shotgun in a bank vault and prevented the kidnapping of a fellow teller. He had, in another incident, backed away from a pistol and the thug who offered to use it after Locke asked him for directions during a collection call in East St. Louis. Locke's first 10 years in banking were as eventful as they were productive. (For more on the robbery, see www. North WesternFinancialReview . com ) . The day after Locke graduated from high school, he started working at Godfrey State Bank near his home in Alton, ??. He soon moved on to a national bank in Wood River, ?1., and then to a large savings and loan association where he rose to assistant treasurer. As he turned toward Wisconsin, Locke saw a path leading to bank ownership at McFarland State Bank.

It was 1975. He was 27.

The village of McFarland sits on the east bank of Lake Waubesa, in a southeast stretch of metro Madison. When Locke arrived, McFarland State Bank was in a 1960s-era building about a mile east of Highway 51, just across from the small storefront where the bank opened in 1904. There were about 3,500 residents in the village at the time, and the single-story, single-location bank had one drive- up window. It had $5 million in assets.

Thirty-three years later, when the bank released its third- quarter results for 2008, assets had risen to $349 million. Compared to a year earlier, loans were up by 22 percent, deposits were up by 20 percent, and net income was 5 percent over 2007 at $4.2 million for the nine-month period.

McFarland State Bank is now headquartered in a 21,000 square- foot, twostory building with six drive-up lanes, on a busy intersection of Highway 51. In its former location stands the two- yearold E.D. Locke Public Library, erected in large part by the wherewithal of the banker who grew a bank and a community foundation on those grounds.

In his second-floor office at the bank, with its wraparound view of a December sunset over the ice-capped Lake Waubesa, David Locke talked about decisions and their consequences - including decisions made during his 43 years of banking. Locke, 60, is NorthWestern Financial Review's Banker of the Year for 2009.

Pushing efficiency

What is noticeable as you drive through McFarland today is what's missing. The village is just minutes from Madison itself. Highway 51 teems with traffic flowing to and from the Beltline into the state's capital city, where the nationwide banks compete with strong regional organizations and local-market mavericks. Several of those banks have branches in Monona, just north of McFarland, yet in the village itself, the edifice of McFarland State Bank dominates. A lone branch of a Wisconsin-based regional bank can be seen on Farwell Street as you drive from Locke's bank to the library that bears his name, but no other bank signs are in view.

"I like to think we're pretty tough competitors," Locke said, seated at the conference table in his executive board room below the cast plaster coffered ceiling he helped to set.

"Well-run community banks are efficient,'' he said, and efficiency gave his bank a head start against would-be competitors as the population of McFarland doubled and the village slowly merged into metro Madison.

With his background in bank operations, Locke was inclined to drive efficiency. Two years after he joined the bank, it opened three drive-up teller lanes and became an early adopter of TYME ATMs, now part of the Pulse network.

"It became obvious to me that embracing and utilizing technology helps you in numerous ways - not only on the efficiency side internally, but in attracting and retaining customers," Locke said. One of the axioms of banking is that the more services you can get customers to use, the less likely they are to leave.