Pioneer Nevada banker Laiolo dies

Thursday, April 22, 1999 | 10:51 a.m.

As a teenager looking for summer work in the mid-1930s, Paul Laiolo went into a Reno bank to apply for a teller's job.

A bank official told him to first go to college, get a degree and then become a banker. He took that advice. Three decades later, the son of Italian immigrants co-founded his own Nevada bank.

Paul R. Laiolo, who in 1964 invested $50,000 of his own money to help start Pioneer Citizens Bank of Nevada and served as its president for 20 years, died Monday of complications from Parkinson's disease in Las Vegas. He was 81.

Services are today in Reno for Laiolo, who since the late 1970s has been a resident of both Reno and Las Vegas.

Laiolo helped build Pioneer Citizens from a single branch with 11 employees and $1.2 million in assets into one of the state's most respected financial institutions with 13 branches -- eight of them in Southern Nevada -- 300 employees and more than $900 million in assets.

And he did it as a champion of the small consumer, striving to make it possible for middle class Nevadans to buy their dream homes.

"His door was always open and he had a personal touch with people," said Laiolo's wife, Rhetta, of Las Vegas. "He took great pride in the fact that he helped hundreds of Nevada families own their homes."

In a story published in the November 1998 issue of Las Vegas Life magazine, Laiolo shared his longtime banking philosophy: "We made up our minds that we were going to treat people like human beings. ... We tried to treat everybody the way they wanted to be treated."

Born Dec. 29, 1917, on a farm near Reno, Laiolo was the son of Giovanni and Sylvia Laiolo, who came to America in the early 20th century and settled in Tonopah. The couple saved the money Giovanni earned working in the mines and bought a farm, where they raised Paul and his older sister, Olga.

The couple dreamed their son would one day become a teacher, and he, too, flirted with that idea for a while.

"My parents felt teaching was the most honorable profession outside the priesthood," Laiolo told Las Vegas Life, a sister publication of the Sun.

However, after graduating from the University of Nevada in 1938, Laiolo decided to begin his banking career, taking a job as an operations officer at First National Bank of Nevada. He did that job while he worked on his master's degree, which he earned in 1941. Laiolo's thesis was on Nevada banking statistics.

During World War II Laiolo was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy and helped establish the financial headquarters for the military government in Okinawa.

After the war Laiolo went to work for Nevada Bank of Commerce, where he served as a vice president in charge of real estate loans and commercial loan production.

In 1964 Laiolo entered into partnership with fellow Italian-Americans Lewis Capurro, Ben Karamella and Harold Cafferata and another friend, Royal Stewart, to start Pioneer Citizens Bank.

Because the institution had so many Italian-American investors it was affectionately nicknamed "Nevada Bank of Italy" shortly after it opened on March 31, 1965. The bank targeted the large Italian-American community of Reno for a customer base and, by the end of the first year, had $6 million in assets.

In 1969 Laiolo was elected president of the Nevada Bankers Association. Three years later, Pioneer Citizens opened its first Las Vegas branch. In 1978, Laiolo became a member of the American Bankers Association.

A Reno civic leader, Laiolo served on the mayor's citizens advisory committee, was a member of the grand jury and was active in the United Way and Chamber of Commerce. He was a member of the Hidden Valley Country Club.

Laiolo retired as a Pioneer Citizens executive in 1986 but remained on the board of directors until 1988. In the early 1990s, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, a progressive nervous disease that destroys brain cells and is characterized by muscular tremor, partial facial paralysis and weakness.

In addition to his wife, Laiolo is survived by two daughters, Barbara March of Carmel, Calif., and Nancy Winters of Reno; three stepsons, Peter Sweeney of Scottsdale, Ariz., Mark Sweeney of Clearwater Beach, Fla., and Matthew Sweeney of Reno; a stepdaughter, Liza Snodgrass of Scottsdale; five grandchildren; three great grandchildren; a nephew; and a niece.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Hazel Eather Laiolo, the daughter of Nevada Supreme Court Justice Edgar Eather.