Edward Dingledy

Betsy and I live in Etowah, NC in the center of a triangle of Asheville, Brevard, and Hendersonville. We picked this area after extensive research and visits to places all over the country.

My business career started in 1963 with Lybrand, Ross Bros and Montgomery (now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers). As a new employee with a desire for travel and adventure, when an opportunity came up to work in the Caribbean, I immediately volunteered my services. My main asset for that position was the relocation cost was cheap since there was no family to move. That soon changed as Betsy and I got married and after short assignments in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, had a two year honeymoon assignment in Bermuda, living in baronial splendor but with pedestrian wages. We started our family and when the contract was completed, we returned to the United States with a new baby girl.

In 1970, we moved back to New York and started a four year stint with Chemical Bank. Those were the early days of electronic banking and funds transfer. I had some bank operations experience from my assignments in the Caribbean and was asked to research the business potential. Even though there are problems being pioneers, there were also some real benefits. Since this was a new field, I became an instant expert.

Commuting in NYC is not much fun. So when an opportunity to move to Hartford Connecticut came up, I jumped at the chance. What convenience; two hours from New York, two hours from Boston, one hour from sailing, one hour from skiing and ten minutes from work. And the job was perfect, developing new electronic banking products.

Eventually, a friend and another anointed expert, and I started a software company that developed electronic funds transfer clearing and settlement systems. Unfortunately just as we got started, tragically he was killed in an automobile accident. That was a difficult time as I lost a friend and brilliant business partner.

Our youngest daughter Sara, helped us through that time with her humor. Once, when driving home after cleaning out my partner’s office, Sara suggested that we should have another baby, because she always wanted a brother. I told her this was a bad time financially to expand the family and there was no guarantee we would have a boy. She said “what about adopting?” I explained that we would still have the financial responsibility for the maternity care. She thought for a second then asked,” Do they ever have clearance sales?”

Somehow, we survived and, after ten years, I sold the company to an international computer services company.

Our daughters had grown, graduated from college and were now on their own and so were we. I was interested in going back to international consulting and the timing was opportune.

Global trade was becoming more important, particularly for third world countries but there was a concern about the financial risk; did the country have sufficient resources and necessary controls to measure that risk. One of the required procedures was to continuously monitor their daily settlement position. New technology using electronic payments system solved that problem. As these systems were implemented, the global trade increased helping the economies of many third world countries.

I spent extended time in Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Mauritius, and Vietnam. Betsy joined me for some of touristy portions of the trips to add a vacation element. A future assignment possibly was scheduled for Nepal. Then the twin towers came down and ended my international consulting career.