Pike National Bank founder the late Joe Sones, started a Christmas tradition that has been carried on for 20 years — lighting an elaborate display at its main branch at 350 Rawls Drive in McComb on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Sones’ daughter, bank president Jennifer Wallace said her father loved the holidays.
“The quantity of lights are all attributed to him,” she said.
“All of this” includes a lawn covered with white wintery scenes, a beautiful live tree standing over 12 feet tall in the bank’s foyer, a train set circling it, giant toy soldiers and even Father Time.
“Each of our branches is decorated, too,” Wallace said.
Bank executive vice president Diane H. Cothern, along with Sones, started collecting decorations the first Christmas the Rawls Drive Branch was open in 1995.
“It’s gotten bigger every year,” she said. “We have started going through and refurbishing or replacing old parts of the decorations,” Cothern said.
Cothern said with her schedule and the fact that the Christmas holiday decorations have become an eventful task, she has delegated a lot of the coordination of the work to Nichole Hall, the bank’s vice president of compliance.
“We needed to have the extra help,” Wallace said. “She still does a great deal of work with it. But, we are carrying on Dad’s tradition and trying to make Christmas a very special time for our customers.”
The bank is having an open house on Christmas Eve from 10 a.m. to noon to give customers a chance to take pictures with all of the Christmas decorations.
“We have had so many visitors come in to take pictures with our arrangements,” Cothern said. “We wanted to invite our customers to do the same. And, we hope people will stop by and just say hello.”
They’d like to remind customers that they have stocked up on what they call “Christmas Cash.”
“It’s brand-new crispy bills,” Wallace explained. “And, we have a nice little Christmas envelope to put Christmas money in. We also have collector-coin and proof sets that are great gifts. We have a whole list of coins that are kept in stock for people to choose from.”
The bank will be closed after the open house on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Saturday.
