 "Photo: Courtesy of Frank Brennan")
Ninety years old and sharp as ever, Frank Brennan is the "elder statesman" of Boston's banking and financial community. Hard work, honesty, and unwavering integrity have made him a living lesson in personal and professional success.
On Jan. 11, friends and colleagues honored Brennan, a 1939 graduate of Boston College, with the establishment of the Francis P. Brennan Fund in Leadership and Ethics.
The fund, under the auspices of the Carroll School of Management's Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, aims to help students develop and apply the personal qualities that Brennan exemplifies. It provides for an annual student symposium that will incorporate lectures and guided discussions with high-level leaders in various professions, along with networking opportunities and skill-building sessions.
While modestly protesting that "I didn't have a damn thing to do with it," Brennan is proud of this new addition to his legacy. When friends at the Massachusetts Business Development Corporation - where he is still active as Chairman of the Board - came to him with a proposal to make a philanthropic gift in his name to a university, Brennan had only one demand: "Nobody's going to be considered except BC."
Brennan's own path to BC was an unlikely one. As a first generation Irish-American raised in a Somerville three-decker, the prospect of a college education didn't even cross his mind. That is, until two extraordinary teachers recognized his exceptional promise. His sixth-grade mentor, Miss Hamilton, signed him up for a college, rather than putting him on the vocational schooling track. When he protested that his out-of-work father couldn't afford it, she promised him that if he worked hard enough, the money would come.
When Brennan graduated high school, another teacher pushed him on. "I didn't even know where BC was," he says. "John O'Laughlin put me on a street car down Commonwealth Ave. and told me to enroll. I think he would have killed me if I went anywhere else."
Within BC's four buildings on the Heights, Brennan absorbed the Jesuit values that would define the rest of his life. "Priests taught every one of my classes. They were smart and tough. I learned to think and reason and persuade," he says. "They taught me that if you do the right thing and help your fellow man, then everything will work out."
That conviction carried Brennan through the leanest years of the Depression, when he worked as a gas station attendant, grocery bagger, and janitor. He caught his break when a BC acquaintance got him a job at the government's Reconstruction Finance Corporation. With no experience in banking, he entered a profession that he would never leave.
World War II put his rising career on hold. Brennan served in the 701st Tank Battalion under General Patton in the European theater, where he quickly distinguished himself with his quick, rational thought.
"I was the only one with a college degree, and I could outthink every one of them," he says. "Every time there was a problem that couldn't be solved, they said, 'take it to Sergeant Brennan; he'll do it'." For his services to his country, Brennan was awarded a Bronze Star.
Upon returning, Brennan began his rise to the top of the banking landscape. He was the first employee of the Massachusetts Business Development Corporation, a loan agency that aims to facilitate local business growth. For nearly three decades, beginning in 1961, he was the CEO of Union Warren Savings Bank. In addition, he has belonged to the boards of nearly 15 other corporations, and has lent his leadership to charitable causes such as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Boston chapter of the American Red Cross.
In all of his endeavors, Brennan has remained faithful to his personal ethics. As CEO of Union Warren, he orchestrated six takeovers of other banks. "It's common practice," he says, "to keep a few directors from the other company just so that they have some representation, and let the rest go. But I never fired anyone. People questioned my judgment, but those people that I kept were always loyal to me, and it always worked out."
That Jesuit ideal of helping one's fellow man carried over to his relationships with clients, as well. "If a guy with a wife and three kids wanted to build a house, I'd always try to help him out," he says.
For all of his success in the business world, Brennan always put his family first. He coached Little League in Winchester and attended all of his sons' hockey games. At countless business dinners, he was rarely seen without his beloved wife of 48 years, Mary, at his side.
He instilled his value system in his children, and watched it bring them their own success. His son. Jack, is the CEO of Vanguard Mutual Funds, Tom is the senior vice president of Bank of America, and Marianne is a former vice president of First National Bank, and now a guidance counselor. Eileen, the only one not to go into banking, works at Georgetown University Medical Center. "At least she's worked for a blood bank," says Brennan, repeating a favorite quip of his son Jack.
The most important things he wanted his children to learn are honesty and hard work. "Jack's the straightest shooter you'll meet. You don't read about any scandals at Vanguard like you do with so many other companies," said Brennan.
"I never gave my kids summer jobs at Union Warren. Jack cut grass beside the highway for the Turnpike Authority. Tom worked as a garbage man. Both of them still do their own yard work today."
Brennan is thrilled to see those values surviving. "My grandchildren are cut from the same cloth," he proudly says.
More than anything else, Brennan credits his success to faith in God. A loyal Catholic, he begins every day with the same prayer that his Jesuit teachers began every class with at BC. He has been honored by the church as a Knight of Malta and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.
"Let the good Lord call the shots, and things will always have a way of working out" he says. "If God is your co-pilot, you're in the wrong seat."
Brennan counts Justice Louis Brandeis among his business role models. "Brandeis once said, 'Most of the things worth doing in the world would have been declared impossible before they were done,'" he says. "Makes you think, doesn't it?"
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