Wayne Gentry, 95, stepped across that threshold to his heavenly home on January 23, 2022. He was born on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1926 to Lonnie and Nellie Gentry.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 56 years, Peggy Warren Gentry and is survived by two children, Karen Gentry and Greg. He had two grandchildren and a new great-grandchild. A private graveside service was held the following Wednesday at Moulton Memory Gardens. Elliott Funeral Home assisted the family.
Mr. Gentry finished at Columbia Military Academy in Tennessee and later served in the U.S. Army as an airplane mechanic in Seattle during the close of World War II. He then went to the University of Alabama, graduating in business in 1949.
From there Wayne returned to Moulton to assist his father at The Citizens Bank. He took over duties as bank president when Lonnie accepted the State Banking Superintendent’s post under Jim Folsom in 1955.
One of Mr. Gentry’s favorite periods in his life was in 1960-61, when he was elected president of the Alabama Jaycees, and then elected as a national vice president the following year. At a couple of the larger Jaycee dinners, he once sat next to future President Richard Nixon, as well as former Apollo I astronaut Gus Grissom who later died in the tragic fire at Cape Canaveral. In 1970 Gentry ran for state senate, finishing second in a five man field and missing the run-off by only a couple hundred votes.
But it is his service at the bank that most people remember him for. He remained as President until 1994 then continued on as Board Chairman until the bank sold in 2008. It is noteworthy that in the 70-odd years that he and and his father managed the bank, that they suffered only two annual operating losses–one during the Great Depression and another minor loss in 1962 due to a widespread crop failure. Furthermore, when Wayne was preparing to step down from his management duties, a regional FDIC examiner visited a board meeting and stated that the Citizens Bank was the most solid institution he’d ever examined in his nearly four decade career. The bank had for some time one of the highest “capital ratio’s” among all established banking institutions in Alabama.
But even these accolades do not measure up to the kind, affable, and loving man Wayne truly was. We, his children, were blessed that God gave him to us for so many years, and we look forward to that future time when we can embrace him again in that eternal abode.
