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| Lou Petritz |
"I like machines that move the body and the spirit," the Naperville resident said. "There's something so refreshing and exhilarating and yet very practical about taking these methods of transportation."
He also didn't start out in banking. Instead, he was a repo man with a consumer financial company where he learned a lot about business.
"For a twenty-something, it was a good job," Petritz said. "It gave me a lot of time out of the office, too. That's where I learned a lot about business and about people. It even taught me how to look someone in the eye and decide if they're telling me the truth."
He later attended night classes, earned his MBA and went into banking as a career. He held leadership roles at American Chartered Bank, U.S. Bank and Gary-Wheaton Bank of Fox Valley before replacing J. Patrick Benton at First Community in Naperville.
"This was a good opportunity to continue in banking. It was the right job at the right time," he said.
When he's not in the office, he loves to hit the road ... or the sky.
When he was about 40, he took flying lessons at an airport in Bolingbrook and eventually earned a pilot's license.
He'll rent a Cessna 172, a single-engine plane with four seats. He and his wife, Judie Caribeaux, take trips around the Midwest, a nice perk for pilots, he said.
"There's a joke among pilots about the $100 hamburger," he said. "You fly somewhere just for the day and have lunch and the hamburger costs you $5, but the fuel costs are $95."
"There's something about flying an airplane that it's like a brain flush. You can't think of anything else at the time and you must focus on what you're doing."
He also owns two motorcycles, a Yamaha V-Star and Honda Shadow and he often goes on road trips with one of them. But he doesn't drive them to the office.
"My suit would get tattered," he joked.
Story and Photo: https://www.dailyherald.com
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