Fomer employees gather to reminisce about the old PSFS

Former Meritor Savings Bank employees have - for the most part - left behind bitter feelings about the demise of their bank in a federal takeover 18 years ago.

"We were screwed," a laughing Robert Hanna said Monday evening at a reunion on the top floor of what is now a Loews Hotel, which still bears the iconic PSFS sign.

Hanna started at what was then the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society right after high school in 1953 and rose during a 40-year career to senior vice president of banking systems and services.

"PSFS was more to Philadelphia than most people realize," said Hanna, betraying his still-fierce attachment to the institution that developed deep community roots by collecting children's deposits in schools for generations.

A legal fight over PSFS, which changed its name to Meritor in 1986, has endured for 18 years. In July, 15 judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington heard arguments on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s liability for a $276 million judgment to Meritor shareholders. A decision has not been issued.

The stock still trades, with some investors betting on a future payout. It closed at $2.44 Tuesday.

During a reunion cocktail hour in the former PSFS executive dining room, most of the talk was not about the bank's unpleasant end. Instead, it was about intensely competitive ping-pong games and how great it was to be able to start work right after high school and still get a college degree at night - with reimbursement by the bank.

Joe Slane, who came from Naples, Fla., for the reunion, recalled how he went to Simon Gratz High School to help run the PSFS school savings program there.

"You used to sit in a cage and collect money," he said. The cages were on wheels, so they could be put away on nonbanking days.

Since 2000, when Loews opened the PSFS building as a hotel, the group has been meeting there. The first year, Milton McGuckin, who worked at PSFS for 34 years, finishing in records management, sent 600 invitations, and 400 former employees attended.

On Monday, there were 68, though a few more had signed up but could not make it at the last minute, said Charles Bechtel, a 25-year PSFS veteran who helps McGuckin organize the event. Loews lets the group use the 33d floor, including the former boardroom, where dinner was served, "at a discount," Bechtel said.