The Roy Bergengren Era, 1945-1954

The economic boom that followed the end of the war greatly benefited credit unions nation-wide, but 1945 also provided the Vermont movement with an added stimulus in the person of Roy F. Bergengren. A Harvard-educated lawyer who had received his undergraduate education from Dartmouth around the turn of the century, Bergengren had served as the dynamic and hard-working leader of the national credit union movement since the early 1920s. However, after a lengthy political battle within the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) in 1944, he decided it was time to retire from his role as the Managing Director and moved shortly thereafter from Madison, Wisconsin to "a little farm on a pleasant Vermont hillside."¹

To Roy Bergengren, however, "retirement" did not mean quietly living out his golden years on the laurels of his years of dedicated service to credit unionism. For him, strengthening the credit union movement was not simply a way to make a living, but a deeply moral mission (his level of fervor and commitment is apparent in the title of his memoirs - Crusade: The Fight for Economic Democracy), and he fully intended to continue spreading the credit union idea in the Green Mountain State. Indeed, according to his granddaughter, the fact that Vermont was one of the only states that still lacked a credit union league was a major factor in Bergengren decision to conclude his career there.²

With only a handful of credit unions in existence and no state-wide organization which could help establish new credit unions and advance their interests in the legislature, Bergengren had his work cut out for him. Working under the auspices of the Vermont Cooperative Council, and with the financial backing of a Montpelier milk co-op, he immediately began traversing the state assisting interested groups to get new credit unions off the ground. ³

One example of his handiwork from this period is the Vermont State Employees Credit Union (VSECU). At the second annual meeting of the Vermont State Employees Association in 1946, Bergengren gave a speech extolling the virtues of credit unions.⁴ A committee to create a VSEA credit union was subsequently formed, and, on March 10, 1947, "with the helpful assistance and advice of Roy F. Bergengren," the Montpelier Tavern was the scene of the official organizational meeting of the newly created VSECU. ⁵