Five long-time Hallsville school faculty members plan to retire soon, and the district is celebrating their years of service Wednesday.

“The Hallsville (ISD) will honor five employees who are retiring from the Hallsville schools on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2:30 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. at the Hallsville High School Cafeteria located at 616 Cal Young Rd.,” said Carol Greer, HISD director of communications. “Collectively the group has given a total of 115 years of service and dedication to the students and staff of HISD. The public is invited to attend.”

The employees are Wayne Deakins, Jan Hopkins, Danny Poindexter, Peggy Johnson and Ruth Yielding. Each has served the district for several years and leave fond memories with their fellow employees.

Deakins worked with HISD for 20 years at several campuses.

“Wayne Deakins has worked with Hallsville Schools for 20 years,” Greer said. “Prior to coming to HISD he worked for Texas Eastman for 30 years. He worked in the area of all our landscaping and campus improvement and beautification of the grounds for the district including five campuses, District Operations Center, Administration Building, Little Cats Pre-K, transportation department, Administration Annex Office Building as well as other properties the HISD owns. Mr. Deakins is a very hard worker who takes extreme pride in all he does. We will certainly miss him at HISD.”

Johnson has worked with HISD for 22 years, helping to serve meals to students from kindergarten to third grade. According to Greer, Johnson often volunteers to help with district activities.

“Peggy Johnson has worked for HISD Food Service for 22 years and in Longview Cafeteria for three,” Greer said. “She is manager of the cafeteria at East Elementary School and serves grades K-3, and staff. Peggy is an outgoing, friendly person who loves children and people. She would help anyone in any way she could. She volunteers in other ways to help the district in all areas.”

Johnson also trained new cafeteria employees.

“Peggy is a great trainer for new cafeteria staff,” said Marci Rutland, HISD director of Chartwells School dining services. “She knows how to do each task and relates well when teaching new food service employees. She is known all over the district for her delicious cinnamon rolls. She may bring them to each campus as a surprise. She always wanted the best presentation of food at a banquet or through the lunch line.”

Also retiring from the district’s food services is Yielding, who has worked at HHS for 27 years.

”Ruth, if I could say two words, it would be; dedicated and hard working,” Rutland said. “She is very creative and willing to try new recipes using different kinds of foods. She is extremely innovative, always working to come up with innovative ideas, when it came to commodities she was creative and experimental, willing to take a chance with new ideas and they worked.

“She would also think of ways to change service to enhance procedures and areas for lines to rotate with a large number of students. She has worked at the high school for 27 years, serving grades nine to 12.”

Greer maintains that Poindexter has been valuable to the continued maintenance of HISD’s various appliances needed to operate schools.

“Danny Poindexter has probably worked on more appliances than any serviceman in town,” she said. “From washing machines, to dish washers, from pencil sharpeners to air conditioners, he knows how to fix them all and has done so for HISD for 18 years.”

Finally, Hopkins has served the district as a teacher for numerous years, and has also worked as a technology specialist to help her fellow teachers in educating Hallsville’s students.

“Jan Hopkins has been such an asset to the district,” said Toni Erickson, instructional technology coordinator. “She was an amazing teacher when she was in the classroom, and has been invaluable as a Technology Specialist helping teachers integrate technology in the classroom, as well as creating multimedia lessons (for) student use. The positive impact that Jan has made on Hallsville ISD will be remembered for years to come.”

The celebration is set for Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. in the HHS cafeteria. For more information, contact HISD at (903) 658-5990.

“The dedication of each one of these employees was appreciated by HISD,” Greer said.

In 2007, bank branches seemed destined for a bright new future, full of techno wonders that would delight, inspire and make a trip to the teller window as breezy as a Jetson family jaunt in the aerocar with the top down.

After all, it was an era that encouraged bankers to dream. The U.S. economy was full-speed ahead, and profits were fat and quarterly, thanks to the conceit that every American, no matter how feckless, needed to have a mortgage.

While the mortgage bankers were getting all the attention, and bonuses, the folks in charge of the retail side turned their attention to the humble branch. What was needed was deposits, to satisfy all the loan requests. One strategy, said Tony Plath, a banking professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was to compete with other banks based on the amenities offered in branches, where most people opened new accounts.

Many proposals made the rounds to amp up the headline factor. Waterfalls started appearing in some branches, along with fancy outdoor landscaping, coffee bars and Internet kiosks.

Push the fast-forward button from 2007 and things are much different. The financial crash of 2008 — mostly caused by bank speculation in the future cash flows of home mortgages extended to people with fictitious incomes and poor credit records — eliminated bank expansion plans and capital expenditures.

Ideas that seemed fabulous at the time were terminated as reinforcing the idea that banks made so much money in the lush years that they could waste some of it on trifles.

“The waterfalls, coffee bars and popcorn machines went out the window,” Plath said. “Things would never be the same for bank branches.”

Branches continued to be magnets for deposits, and still are to some degree, he said, but that is waning.

U.S. banks have closed about 800 branches in the past six months. Huge national chains such as Bank of America and Citigroup have been the leaders, as they struggle to get expenses in order after years of losses, TARP paybacks and bad loans.

Overall, U.S. banks have been dropping about 1,000 branches a year for the past few years; the total now stands at about 96,000.

It is a bit different in Nebraska. There were about 1,000 branches in 2004, and there were about 1,100 at last count, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It is the same with many other states with low populations and only a few large cities, such as Iowa, Missouri and South Dakota.

Nebraska banks didn’t suffer as much during the recession, and the state has many one-branch banks.

“We are still building branches,” said Rolland Johannsen, head of First National Bank of Omaha’s retail banking group. “They are mostly on a fill-in basis” or covering a geographic area that has achieved unexpected growth. First National still plans to provide amenities such as coffee bars and wireless Internet access.

And Johannsen doesn’t think branches are done for. “I have been in banking for 35 years, and for 35 years I have been hearing about the end of the branch.”

If there is a trend working against the bank branch, it can be found in cyberspace, in mobile and Internet apps. Internet banking at the dawn of the 21st century got one generation used to not having to visit branches. Now another generation has come of age in an era of mobile banking via smartphone and tablet.

Consultants at professional services firm Accenture said in an analysis last month that bank customer surveys found a 50 percent increase in mobile banking activity over the 12-month period; double- and triple-digit growth in online sales of traditional banking products amid falling sales in branches; and a strong trend of customers looking for suppliers other than their main bank for new financial services.

Most sobering for retail bankers, according to the Accenture analysis, is the growth in sales of those things that people once considered so confidential, important and complicated that only a long visit in a bank office would suffice:

Sales of mortgages via the Internet increased 75 percent while sales at branches fell 16 percent.

Online sales of auto loans nearly doubled while branch sales dropped nearly 10 percent.

Online sales also increased in checking, savings, personal and home equity loans and money market funds.

All of which is good for banks. Such sales require fewer people, less expense, more profit, more revenue from a standardized platform, and what manufacturers call throughput. Nationally, some of the largest banks have been responding as if such developments will take root.

Whether they’ll replace branches, however, still is an open question to some. None of the previous technologies supposedly wielding the executioner’s sword — the Touch Tone telephone, the ATM, the computer — significantly dented the branch count, First National’s Johannsen said.

“Customers found these technologies useful and convenient, and they relied on them to a degree, but they in no way replaced the branch; people just added these to their normal banking behavior,” he said. “Mobile may be different. We will have to wait and see.”

Bruce Paitz, a vice president at Lincoln-based Pinnacle Bank, recognizes the mixed message banks sometimes send with their investments in mobile and Internet banking which, at their core, are to encourage people to avoid the expensive-to-maintain branches.

“Here we go and invest all this money in the branch network, then we go and invest all this money in applications whose message is ‘avoid the branch network,’ ” Paitz said. “But the fact is, customers are embracing these technologies faster than could have been imagined.”

Things are moving fast indeed. Already deep into mobile and Internet banking, next on the block for Pinnacle, Paitz said, is tablet-computer banking. That comes in recognition of the mini-computers many people are carrying around, with screens bigger than a smartphone but more compact than a notebook. And each remote technology — mobile phone, Internet, tablet — requires its own software package, as the screens and displays of each device differ.

If remote technologies such as tablets don’t reduce branch visits, banks are at least hoping they can handle branch traffic in a fraction of the space — space which of course requires lighting, heating, cooling, insuring and securing.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Co., the fourth-largest bank in the nation and second in Nebraska deposit-share, is experimenting with branches as small as 1,000 square feet, or 80 percent smaller than the average of 5,000 square feet, said Kirk Kellner, the company’s regional president overseeing the Cornhusker State.

Such branches have so-called “smart ATMs” capable of taking deposits, dispensing one-dollar and five-dollar bills, and lobby-based bankers equipped with tablet computers, but far fewer tellers and far less back-office space for paperwork and office tasks.

“We are trying those out in Washington, D.C.,” Kellner said. “They very well might end up elsewhere.”

Some of the latest ATMs are even connected via video feed to a customer service center, where a teller appearing on the monitor will assist with questions, deposits, withdrawals and other routine matters.

Plath, the banking professor, said smartphone, tablet, mobile and small branches sum up the future of banking. The full service branch of the past? Forget it, he said; they are nothing but expensive, and not of interest to anyone but people about age 50 and older.

Switching to small branches with nothing but a banker or two to sell loans and investments and a smart ATM hooked up by video link to a customer call center for routine transactions is the new banker dream, he said.

“Believe me, banks say it all the time in their internal meetings, they just don’t say it in the media,” said Plath, who was a banker himself before entering academia. “They don’t want to tick off their older customers.”

I had lunch recently with a group of women in their 60s and the conversation turned to holiday gifts and which ones we liked and those we didn’t.

Most agreed since they were downsizing their possessions that they didn’t want any more items such as vases, mugs, jewelry, books or clothes. Their favorite gifts were homemade baskets customized to their tastes such as knitting materials, favorite foods, art supplies, stamps, cards, packing materials, puzzles or puzzle books, scented and other types of candles, or bath products. New family photos were appreciated especially if they were framed. Memory books with or without photos were welcomed. 

When asked what their favorite gifts of all time were the responses included a case of wine, a weekend trip to a luxurious inn, a spa membership, a lifetime subscription to the New Yorker, gift cards, a Bose radio, a juicer, a Smartphone, a tablet, Cashmere scarves or sweaters, and tickets to a concert or play. And no one ever was offended, especially in leaner years, about receiving a gift of cash.

We then talked about gifts that we give to our parents and other relatives and neighbors who were in their 80s and 90s. Gifts of time were especially appreciated by this group. A granddaughter volunteered to come over weekly to change beds and cook dinner. Gifts to elderly neighbors included shoveling, lawn upkeep, taking out their garbage, cooking them dinner, or asking them to dinner. Most of us volunteered to take older family members who no longer drive to medical appointments or errands. Gifts to parents living in other states included: arranging for professional landscaping, paying for a year’s worth of haircuts, hiring people to shovel snow and walk pets. One mother in-law raved about a gourmet gift basket she received each month, and another was delighted with having her monthly utility bills paid.

Most of us also gave gifts that were practical, and increased both safety and mobility. Examples of these were: a wall clock or phone with bold, easy-to-read numbers, life lines, magnifying glasses, amplifying devices, and floor lamps that gave off high intensity light. Air conditioners, fans and safe mobile space heaters were also popular gifts. Warm clothing, shawls especially those with pockets, heated blankets, no-skid slippers, warm socks and sturdy pens that were easier to hold in arthritic hands were also popular choices. 

If you are in doubt about giving a suitable gift, ask. Some of us were surprised when we did. One woman asked for fancy teas and chocolate she couldn’t afford, another said she would be thrilled if her daughter would pick up her and her friends to take them to bingo and bridge games, a man wanted new sets of dominos, dice and playing cards, a baker wanted better cookie sheets and muffin tins, as well as assorted types of sugar. One of us cringed when she went into her uncle’s bathroom, so she spent an hour one day at Bed Bath Beyond and another hour putting up a new shower curtain, replacing worn out towels, and added a coordinated rug and waste basket, some bars of soap and lotions. We asked, how did he respond? He practically cried, she said. He grew up during the Depression and wasn’t used to updating his household items. She was glad she paid attention to her observations.

Ask yourself if a gift is age appropriate, is well thought out, or can fulfill a wish or need of someone. These are the gifts that will be appreciated and remembered.

Ann Murphy Fletcher is a Waltham resident.