With more than 22,000 members, Cy-Fair Federal Credit Union has grown from humble beginnings into a community institution over the past 60 years.
The credit union was founded in 1956 by 10 employees within the Cy-Fair Consolidated School District—six teachers, a middle school principal, an elementary school principal, the district’s business manager and a maintenance worker.
It all started out of a desk drawer in Cy-Fair High School’s office, Cy-Fair FCU President and CEO Cameron Dickey said. At that time, Cy-Fair’s total population was about 6,630, and CFCSD’s enrollment consisted of 1,326 students at six schools.
“These people just decided to fill out the paperwork, wanting to do something nice for their fellow employees and for their community,” Dickey said. “It’s such a different story than how a bank starts where there’s business planning and investors and risk analysis ahead of time.”
Through historical research, Dickey said he and his staff discovered 115 names of volunteers who were not only instrumental to the credit union’s history but to the school district as well. Nearly 20 of those original volunteers now have CFISD schools named after them, he said.
“These volunteer board members would review the loan applications of their colleagues,” Dickey said. “They would even call up the original 10 founders and say, ‘So-and-so needs to borrow some money, and there’s not enough money in the credit union, so you all need to make a deposit.’”
The group donated an office on the high school’s campus called the Reo Annex as the credit union’s first official location. Within a few years, the group purchased a plot of Jersey Village land for the organization’s first paid space.
At that time, Pat Willbern was serving as the credit union’s first president. She and her husband, Thomas “Bubba” Willbern—who was the school district’s personnel manager—sketched the office’s design together in 1977.
“It’s amazing to me that this very homegrown thing would develop into all these buildings,” Dickey said. “Eventually, they found [the current headquarters] building for sale [on Jones Road], previously owned by a bank that had failed.”
The organization was still fairly small to be operating in a 60,000-square-foot building, and its leaders hit a roadblock after the National Credit Union Administration told them they needed to find a smaller space, Dickey said.
However, the board decided the purchase was worth the investment, defied the order and bought the building anyway. Dickey said the following year when the NCUA reviewed the credit union and discovered the discrepancy, the board fought until the administration granted a waiver.
Today, Cy-Fair FCU continues to be a community-focused organization with close ties to the school system. Earlier this year, the credit union signed a $1.5 million deal for the naming rights to Cy-Fair FCU Stadium.
Dickey said he believes community members should feel good about where they conduct business. At Cy-Fair FCU, that comes through giving back to local charitable organization and schools, he said.
“I credit the heart that is in the fabric of our organization to those [founding] volunteers,” he said. “They really did help us think about the people who are coming in to our environment and what we can do for them. [Social responsibility] is not just something that we do on the side, but it’s a core part of the business.”
