Broadwell and HomeTrust President and Co-CEO Dana Stonestreet sat down to talk with Jessie Stone, assistant editor of the newspaper, to discuss his 48-year career at HomeTrust. The article is below.

Pictured above: Broadwell stands in front of the first Clyde Savings & Loan Association branch in 1970. As the organization grew, the name changed to HomeTrust Bank.

HomeTrust bids farewell to Broadwell

by Jessie Stone | Assistant Editor | The Mountaineer | 11/22/2013

After 52 years in the banking game, Ed Broadwell, chairman and CEO of HomeTrust Bancshares, Inc., is ready to hang up his jersey.

Broadwell, 75, has lived in Asheville with his wife Donna for about 20 years, but he has been, and still is, a part of the Haywood County family. He lived in Waynesville for many years while leading the first HomeTrust Bank branch in Clyde and served on numerous community boards. “In 1996, I was probably the youngest person in Waynesville Rotary Club,” he joked.

Broadwell started out as a state bank examiner and while examining Clyde Savings and Loan, Director Bucky Brown realized his talents and convinced him to move his family to Clyde to lead the newly assembled team. He was only 27 years old. He was the seventh employee hired in the early days of a company that now has more than 300 employees and 21 branches. The bank had $400,000 in capital when he began his career.

Today HomeTrust has a net worth of $370 million. But Broadwell is hesitant to take credit for the bank’s success. For him, the only thing he really did was hire the right people for the job.

With a degree in economics from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, he said he learned the importance of strategic planning – personally and professionally. “I learned how important it was to get the right players on the bus,” he said.

It’s a rarity to find someone who has stayed with one company for their entire career, but Broadwell said he was just lucky to find a perfect fit in his first quarter. “It doesn’t happen often. I was able to start at the top. I was just blessed to be in the right place at the right time,” he said. “This job has been so satisfying. I love what we do and the people we’ve employed over the years have made a great team.”

On Monday, Broadwell will pass the ball to his co-CEO Dana Stonestreet, who has worked along side him for 25 years. Broadwell compared his relationship with Stonestreet to Tar Heels head basketball coach Dean Smith who passed the position onto his assistant coach Bill Guthridge when he retired. He said the two coaches worked together so well they basically shared the same thought process when it came to making decisions.

“When you think about the same thing at the same time, you start to think ‘they don’t need both of us,'” Broadwell said. He is confident that the team he helped build, with Stonestreet at the helm, will continue making great gains on the field. “We have to be ready for change and help everyone else change,” he said.

Stonestreet said Broadwell has helped HomeTrust be on the cutting edge of banking changes through the years. He has seen the bank through some of the toughest economic times, including 25-percent interest rates in the 80s to the latest recession. Stonestreet said the bank came out on the other end by having strong capital, cutting expenses to the bone and creating new types of accounts and loans.

“He’s created a very strong and vibrant community bank that has created a positive economic impact for all the communities of Western North Carolina,” he said.

In addition to all his community service in Western North Carolina, Broadwell also served on a Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System council alongside Chairman Ben Bernanke.

On Oct. 28, Broadwell was inducted into the North Carolina Banking Hall of Fame. “You have to be really old,” he joked when asked how one becomes a hall of famer.

He said the induction and retirement reception were overwhelming for him as he was met with surprise after surprise from his colleagues.

He was given the Order of the Long Leaf Pine Award from the governor, a personal letter from Bernanke congratulating him on his retirement and thanking him for his service on the council, a North Carolina flag flown over Raleigh in his honor, a U.S. flag flown over Washington, D.C., in his honor, an oil portrait that will hang in the board room on HomeTrust Bank and a key to the city of Asheville.

Perhaps the most meaningful moment was when the HomeTrust board told Broadwell it would donate $50,000 to his charity of choice. He chose to set up an endowed scholarship to help send WNC students to college at Western Carolina University – specifically students who are the first in their family to attend college.

Broadwell said his greatest accomplishment has been being able to be a part of the most important moments in people’s lives – from buying a home to saving for retirement. But more importantly to Broadwell, his employees see him as a good person who cares about people and that is the culture he has strived to create at HomeTrust Bank. “You get to be a little piece of their dreams,” he said. “The most rewarding thing has been to watch my employees grow and become stars. I’m just going to get out of the way and let them do it.”

During this important transition, Stonestreet said the bank wanted to examine its values and put into writing how the employees can continue Broadwell’s culture of caring. They were able to boil it down to one sentence.

“We are on a meaningful and purposeful journey to make a positive difference for individuals, businesses and our communities,” he said.