In 1954, when the president of the Edmonton, Ky., Bank sat down to interview a Mormon missionary applying for a new account, the missionary ended up asking the bank president a question that changed his life.
The bank president, Doyle Crenshaw, asked his questions. Then the missionary, Elder Ranson Hatch, asked which church the bank president was most familiar with. "Almost before I could answer, he went right on and gave a lesson," said Brother Crenshaw, now a member of the Church for almost 40 years. "The lessons continued, but after the fourth, he informed me that he was to be transferred. He wanted to know when I would be ready to be baptized.
"I replied, `Right now.'
"He said, `Well, I am not going to baptize you right now. You continue to prepare and we will baptize you next Sunday."
On that Sunday, the small Edmonton Branch turned out as the local bank president was baptized in a fork of the river at Bradfordsville.
Brother Crenshaw said he started his banking career as a file clerk after returning from service in World War II. A short time later, the bank president left for another job and the bank operated without a president. Then bank officials somewhat reluctantly offered the job as president to their file clerk.
He was not reluctant about accepting.
"I took over in 1952, when I was 27 years old," he recalled. "For 13 years I was chief executive officer of the bank." He later accepted the position as president of the Hartford Bank and Trust in Hartford, Ky., where he was the only Latter-day Saint in the county. Later he took the job as president of the Springfield Bank, on the other side of the state. The Springfield Bank was sold a short time ago, and he retired. But his retirement didn't last as he was offered the job as president of the Fordsville Bank, where he continues to work. After he accepted this job he returned to live in Hartford, located near Fordsville.
His Church service started just a few months after his conversion when the convert found himself not only president of a bank, but also of the Edmonton Branch as well.
Since that time, he's served as district president twice, and counselor to mission presidents William H. Day, George Durrant, Reed Benson and Calvin Smoot.
Recently, after moving to Hartford, a small community in Ohio County, Ky., he was again called as branch president over a branch he helped organize. The branch now has an average attendance of nearly 60, and a number of branch members have become reactivated and received their temple blessings.
"A lot of people straightened out their lives, turned themselves around and are going to the temple," he said. "When we started, we thought we might have 15 or 20 attending. But now we've got the missionaries here teaching and baptizing, and the brethren are advancing in the priesthood."
Today, he devotes one night a week to going out with the missionaries to find and teach investigators in a wide area of the branch, which is about 50 miles across.
"I have had a lot of joy from seeing people converted to the gospel and advancing in the priesthood," he said.
Although the branch is small, it has some strong leadership. His counselors are Lynn Schroader, owner and operator of a semi-trailer truck, and Blaine Pieper, administrator of the Ohio County Hospital. Grover Canty, elders quorum president, is the supervisor of the Ohio County Board of Education; Capt. Bill Baker, the Sunday School president, is a retired Air Force officer; and Shawn Layden, ward clerk, is the football coach at Ohio County High School.
