Bert Lance

At a party in Calhoun Georgia for newly appointed City School Superintendent Dr. Jack Lance, young LaBelle David was asked to introduce Dr. Lance's 11-year-old son, Bert, to the various guests. Ten years later, Bert Lance and LaBelle David were married and Bert Lance was working as a teller at Calhoun First National Bank, a position arranged by his grandfather-in-law, A.B. David. In 1962, Lance became President of Calhoun First National Bank, at 31, the youngest bank president in the United States (As of 2008). As President of the bank, and with four young sons, Lance looked to the future of the bank and the community. He had the foresight to see the possibilities of the burgeoning carpet industry and the need for Calhoun and Gordon County to shift away from the traditional, cotton-based economy. Under Lance's direction, the bank began to invest in new industries, new businesses and in entrepreneurial people with ambitious ideas. Both the banks the community prospered. Eventually, Lance left Calhoun to become Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation. He later ran for Governor, became President of the National Bank of Georgia, and finally Director of the Federal Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter. In the end though, Lance returned to Calhoun. His father, Thomas Jackson Lance, was president of Young Harris College, a small Methodist institution in northeast Georgia. Young Mr. Lance attended Emory University and the University of Georgia, but under financial pressure to support his wife, the former LaBelle David, whom he had married in 1950 at age 19, and their newborn son, he dropped out shortly before he would have graduated. After one unsuccessful run for governor, for which Mr. Lance generated business support, Mr. Carter was elected in 1970 and named Mr. Lance director of the state’s crony-ridden and inefficient highway department. Within six years, the department had tripled the volume of contracts it let, with a staff that had shrunk by 26 percent.