Merlin Zitzner
Time period/Barabo: 1972 - present
Submitted by: Corey Davis
My father, Merlin Zitzner, did not attend college with the dream of becoming a banker. In fact, his parents never wanted him to leave the farm. Merlin joined the Army and went to Wisconsin State University of Whitewater on the GI Bill. He graduated in 1969 with a major in finance and a minor in economics and wanted to work for John Deere. However, John Deere and other farm machinery manufacturers did not want him, and his dream was crushed. Then came a job offer from The Continental Bank of Chicago. This job was downtown Chicago and had him traveling up and down the East Coast. A small-town farmer’s son was heading to the major metropolitan meccas as a banker.
In 1972, my father’s boss in Chicago called him and said there was a little bank in Baraboo, Wisconsin, looking for a successor. My Dad was 30 years old and was the perfect age to get 10 to 15 years under his belt before becoming President. My parents were in the process of leaving the safety of their jobs in Illinois, their home, and moving when a stock war began in Baraboo. The Baraboo National Bank, for which my father was going to work, was under siege from an out of state man buying up stock and accelerating the price. The senior management at the bank was not willing to stop the stock war and was surrendering to the fact the bank was going to be sold.
My father went back to Chicago, told his former boss of the news, and was instructed, “No man of ours is going to be beat.” And at that moment a pad of blank notes were torn off, handed to my father, and told, “Go take them on.” My parents came back to Baraboo, went head over heels in debt and saved the bank. Since 1857, The Sauk County Bank, The Bank of Baraboo, The Baraboo National Bank, and The Baraboo State Bank have stayed locally owned and is the oldest bank in the state of Wisconsin.
In October of 1975, my parents received a phone call that the President of the bank and his wife were killed in a tragic car accident. My dad, at the age of 34, became President of the bank. Since 1972, Merlin has been a staple in the Baraboo and Sauk County communities. He was a founding member of Sauk County Development Corporation, which was formed due to the high unemployment rate left when Badger Army Ammunition Plant closed. His goal was to create a diversification of employment so that our communities and citizens would not have to go through a large employer leaving and in turn the population jobless or leaving.
Countless hours of philanthropic work for local Baraboo and Sauk County organizations is the legacy he has built and continues today. My father’s beginning failures of a dream has become a greater legacy and success that he could of never dreamt of, both in and out of a corn field.