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Seal reveals self-made man
fish market, the old gentleman who owned it only had a second grade education, yet I learned a tremendous amount from that man about character. He was constantly telling me and all the other young people to get all the education we could get. He regretted his lack of it, yet he had tremendous common sense and he was a good businessman. I feel fortunate to have gone through all those experiences.”
Seal’s most sobering ex-: perience was the years he ! spent in the Army during World War n. His college education was interrupted, and when he resumed it, he was a very different young man.
“I discovered how really little I knew,” he said. “After coming in contact with so many people and places I discovered I hadn’t even scratched the surface in learning what needed to be learned.”
When he returned to Mississippi State after the war, he felt that he had gained tremendously by the exposure his ‘war education’ had provided.
He feels that the best thing a college education does for you is to teach you to think.
“In the early years,” he said “the essentials of reading, writing, and arithmetic cannot be over emphasized. It seems that we have more sophistication in early education now, but as far as the ‘nuts and bolts of things —I’m not sure they know as much as we did.”
For the college student considering a career in banking and finance, ironically, Seal suggests engineering.
“The basic engineering courses with a high concentration of math, physics, and chemistry challenge the thinking process. If you know how to use your mind, you can transfer the problem solving process to anything you put your mind on,” he said with the strong feeling which accompanies a banking and finance major with all of his electives in engineering.
Leo Seal is a very independent, strong-minded man. He has climbed the ladder of success much like he did those telephone poles in his younger years. He’s gone up —one step at a time— at his own pace and in his hown way.
Putting himself through State on a football scholarship and earning his own money, he refused to take any support funds from his parents.
“I didn’t feel like I could call on my folks to educate me. My father had made his way, and I felt that I’d dishonor him if I tried to say ‘take care of me.” I‘m sure he would have, but I felt that if my father had done what he had done, I ought to endeavor to do the same thing.”
After graduating from State, he began working at Hancock Bank.
“I’ve done every job in the bank,” he said, ‘’from runner on up to running the bank.”
When Seal began as a runner, Hancock was a much smaller bank worth about $14 million. There was a branch in Gulfport, one in Bay St. Louis, and one in Pass Christian. Today Hancock Bank boasts assets of some $450 million, • serving southern Mississippi in 18 locations from Edgewater to Poplarville.
“It’s difficult for people
coming into the industry now to get as good a grasp of the banking business as those who came in when it was small,” he said throughfully. “In those times you had to wear six or eight hats because if someone got sick, someone else had to go in there and pick up the slack. I feel very fortunate in getting in on the ground floor. I feel for every employee in the organization because I’ve done every job and I know that there are no unimportant jobs in the bank. If anyone on any level doesn’t do his job right, then somebody has to come behind him and pick up his marbles.”
He looked away as though he were reliving a scene early in his banking career when he began to talk of his years as a loan officer.
“Back in ’50 or ’51, I had some young people come in, their father had died and they were trying to take over the business,” he said still looking into the distance.
“They outlined to me what they could do with some additional equipment and we had confidence in them, thought they had a solid background and were willing to work, and we’ve seen that business grow into a million dollar enterprise,”
“Of course, they all aren’t that way,” he signed, as he came back to the present.
“In the banking business you have a lot of challenges, and you make some mistakes along the way but you have to have a positive outlook. If you don’t, the world can crumble around you. If you get up in the morning and try to find something wrong with the world you can find it, but you don’t have to find any of that.”
If you get up and say, ‘Well, it’s gonna be another good day’ and just think about things good that can happen to you, a lot of good things happen. Conversely if you get up every morning and look for the bad things you can find them. But, that’s just too much wear and tear on you. Life’s too short to go around trying to make yourself unhappy.”
That basic positive philosophy of life coupled with hard work and a keen observation of people and circumstances appears to be the basic thread of Leo Seal’s “garment of success.”
He has worn that garment well, and the Coast has benefited immeasurably from his efforts.
Today the Port of Gulfport has increased 10 times in volume handled, largely through the talents of this positive thinking banker.
He was named the most outstanding young man in the state in 1958 in recognition of his success in pushing the change of ownership of* the port from city to state.
He was elected state president of the Chamber of Commerce and served as president of both the Young Bankers (1961) and the Senior Section of the Mississippi Banker’s Association (1974).
His efforts to unify the Coast and help the area’s economy recover after Camille will long be remembered by those benefitting from this prompt action.
For the future of his bank, Seal hopes to continue its growth, progress, and reputation on the same track it enjoyed under his father.