♂Frederic Arthur Curtis

Frederic Arthur Curtis (26 May 1903 – 7 May 1990) was a Chicago banker who rose to vice president and comptroller of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. He was the father of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007).

Early life

Frederic Arthur Curtis was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hubert Orestes Curtis (1868–1922) and Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919). He grew up with an older sister, Bessie Wheaton Curtis (1901–1980), who later married John Henry Bonney (1897–1952). By 1920 he was working as a stock clerk, his first recorded job, at sixteen. A family record states that his father permitted him to leave high school to go to work, and later talked him into attending night school; once he had joined a bank, the bank itself sent him on for further training.

Marriage and career

In 1923 he joined the Continental and Commercial Trust and Savings Bank, the bank he served, under its later name of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, until 1967. He married Bernice Reinette Schulz (1905–1993) in Chicago on 30 August 1924. They had one son, Frederic Roger Curtis, born in 1928. By 1940 the census recorded him as an assistant cashier at Continental Bank; he worked a fifty-two week year and reported an income of $5,000 plus other earnings. In February 1949 The Northwestern Banker reported his move from second vice president to assistant comptroller, and the 1950 census found him in that post, working fifty-five-hour weeks. In February 1952 Mid-Continent Banker reported his promotion to comptroller. The family is recorded at the same Chicago address - 9517 Bell Avenue, in the Beverly neighborhood, a house they owned and valued at $11,000 in 1940 - continuously from at least 1935 to 1950; by the time of his son’s 1951 engagement announcement the family had moved to Chappel Avenue, in the South Shore neighborhood, an address the family did not remember and which a family account suggests was a short stay. From 1952 until he retired in 1967 he oversaw the bank’s accounting operations, retiring as a vice president and comptroller; afterwards he worked as a financial consultant.

Death

Frederic Arthur Curtis died on 7 May 1990 in Barrington, Lake County, Illinois, and was buried in Barrington, Cook County. His wife survived him by three years.