PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Exhibit focuses on finance, law

“The Way We Worked in Southeast Kansas Finance/Legal’ is the topic for the August exhibit at the Miners Hall Museum, Franklin.

Different monthly exhibits are planned at the museum leading up to “The Way We Worked,” an exhibition created by the National Archives and a part of Museum on Main Street, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and State Humanities Councils nationwide. It will be on view May 11-June 23, 2013.

Coordinating the August exhibit is the local office of Edward D. Jones &  Co., a financial services firm.

“Edward D. Jones is very humbled to be part of this, and very proud to be able to provide this exhibit for the museum,” said John Ison, financial advisor.

The exhibit includes items provided by several area banks, photographs and items pertaining to the financial history of the area. Ison’s first textbook at Pittsburg State University, “Basic Economics,” is there.

So is the loan book when his father, James Ison, took out his first house loan.

“The way they did it back then was that you brought in your loan book when you made a payment,” Ison said. “They would mark it down in the book, how much was payment, how much was interest.”

That was similar, he said, to his own first job, back in 1981 before technology became used much in the financial world.

“We had double posting,” Ison said. “You would sit there like a monk and when a customer bought a security you would post it in their book and in the securities book. You had to do that manually.”

Ison was a student of Kenneth Colyer at Pittsburg State University, and James Goodknight, who worked at the Joplin office of Edward D. Jones in Joplin, had also been one of Colyer’s students. When Ison approached Goodknight about getting a summer internship, the man said no, they didn’t have those.

However, when Goodknight learned that Ison was also one of Colyer’s students, he decided that something could  be worked out.

“I started in the summer of 1981 and never left,” Ison said. “I’m fortunate to have a good education at PSU, then get a master’s at Notre Dame, and very fortunate to  have a caring teacher to help me find employment.”

He was also fortunate in being able to personally know Edward D. “Ted” Jones Jr., son of the firm’s founder, Edward D. Jones Sr., an investment banker born in 1893 in St. Louis who started his financial services career as a bond salesman in New York City. He founded his company in 1922 at St. Louis, and turned it over to his son in 1968.

“Edward D. Jones Jr. owned a marble company over in Carthage, Mo., and he’d come over here while  he was in the area,” Ison said. “He was a close friend of Johnny Marietta. They both collected railroad cars, not model cars but real ones, and not just any railroad cars. They were especially interested in circus railroad cars. We would go out to eat. I took him to Mike Parise’s restaurant once and they started to sing together.”

Ison added that Jones was a man of great integrity who had a deep respect and consideration for his employees.

“When a lot of people wanted the company to go public, he wanted to keep it private and he never sold it,” Ison said. “Basically, he gave it to the employees.”

He and the company continue to follow in the ways set forth by Jones.

“You have to practice what you talk,” Ison said. “There are basics and fundamentals that you must abide by, such as ethics and honesty. These are priceless.”

He is particularly proud that this exhibit is in the Miners Hall Museum because he has his own personal ties to the area’s mining history.

“My great-grandfather, Lawrence Cinotto, came over from Italy to work in the mines,” Ison said. “He worked in Mine No. 7.”

He said that he has a client whose parents came from the same town, Caneseo, near Turin, Italy, and came to the United States on the same boat.
“I had an uncle, Jack Cinotto, who died in a mine collapse,” Ison said. “I visit his grave.”

In a way, he said, he has followed in his great-grandfather’s footsteps.

“I’m in mining, too, but I mine for investments,” Ison said. “I’m glad I work above ground.”

There is always a special program or activity in conjunction with the monthly exhibits, and this program is planned at 2 p.m. Saturday at the museum. Dr. Dean Cortes, professor and chairman of the PSU department of economics, finance and banking, will discuss his experiences working with business professor in Iraq. The program will be open free to the public.