people · updated 2026-08-29
John Nance Garner
confidence: single-source weakest: ev-0041
John Nance Garner, U.S. Speaker of the House and stockholder in the Three Rivers bank who intervened to save it during the Depression
Vice President of the United States (1933–1941); a personal connection of Charles Tips who, per Tips’ own account, helped save the bank at Three Rivers during the Depression when its president called on Tips for help. Tips’ memoir places the episode during Garner’s Speakership (1931–1933) rather than his vice presidency — a correction from the 1973 speech.
Per Tips’ 1973 prepared marker speech, the Three Rivers bank’s president (Mr. Buckaloo Senior) called on Tips for help, and Tips “stayed up all night and early the next morning got the Vice-President on the phone — with his help we saved the Three Rivers Bank.” [ev-0041]
The memoir version
Tips’ 1962–63 memoir gives the episode in far more detail and differs from the 1973 speech on one checkable point. Garner’s involvement was not merely personal friendship: when Tips organized the Live Oak County State Bank in 1914, Garner — then their Congressman from Uvalde — “purchased $1,000.00 of the stock.” He was a stakeholder in the bank he later saved.
The episode: the national bank examiner liquidating the failed George West bank demanded that Live Oak County funds on deposit at the Three Rivers bank be turned over to him — which would have triggered a run. Mack Buckaloo intercepted Tips returning from North Texas at the Gunter Hotel around three in the morning. Tips stayed in San Antonio and called Garner early:
“Charlie, these damned aristocratic Federal office holders don’t get down to their office until 9 o’clock, but I’ll be waiting in the office of the Comptroller of Currency when he gets there and will take care of the matter for you.”
Garner persuaded the Comptroller that “no good purpose would be served by having another closed bank,” and the examiner was instructed by telephone to leave the county funds where they were. Tips then arranged a Federal Reserve Bank loan that carried the Three Rivers bank “through the worst crisis of the depression, including the ‘bank holiday.’”
The discrepancy: Tips’ 1973 speech calls Garner “Vice-President of the United States” at the time. The memoir says instead that “Mr. Garner was Speaker of the House of Representatives and became Vice President of the United States not very long after that.” Garner was Speaker from December 1931 to March 1933. The memoir’s placement is both the earlier account and the internally consistent one. This expert follows the memoir: the episode belongs to Garner’s Speakership, roughly 1932 to early 1933.