Died August 25, 2012,Columbia, Missouri
College: Calhoun
Graduate School: Harvard University, LL.B., Law, 1968
Military Service: United States Army Infantry officer, platoon leader and company commander, United States Army Europe 1962-64.
June 6, 1939 – August 25, 2012 COLUMBIA, MO Marquis Carl Landrum, 73, died August 25, 2012 at his Columbia, Missouri home. A man of great intelligence, adventure, imagination, and vision with many and varied interests, he considered his main business and life’s work to be banking. Mark Landrum held primary responsibility for his family’s century-old banking enterprise for several decades and saw it grow from its twin roots in Mountain View, Missouri and Tishomingo, Oklahoma into Landmark Bank, with 41 locations in three states. Even as the Bank grew quite large and included many disparate communities, he continued to advocate the philosophy of hometown banking, that is, local banks serving the people, families, and businesses of the 29 small cities of its locations. Mr. Landrum was born June 6, 1939 in Ardmore, Oklahoma to Ruth (Walker) and Carl Landrum. He grew up in Tishomingo, Oklahoma where his father owned First State Bank of Tishomingo, his mother taught school, and his grandmother operated the Walker Hotel. The family later moved to Hobbs, New Mexico, to start a bank, and there he attended Hobbs High School, graduating first in his class in 1957. He was a stand-out high school basketball player. But most summers called him home to Ardmore and Tishomingo, Oklahoma, to work in the bank or on the family’s ranch. Given his keen intellect and interest in varied subjects, Mark chose Yale University to pursue a deep study of literature and to play collegiate basketball. He received a B.A. in English in 1961. He served in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1964, with active duty as a First Lieutenant in Munich, Germany. Upon returning, he studied at Harvard Law School and was awarded a Juris Doctorate in 1967. He began his employment at the Reno, Nevada law firm, Bargas, Bartlett & Dixon in 1967, and a year later, moved to New York to practice corporate law with Jacobs, Persinger & Parker. In 1969, Mark relocated to Columbia, Missouri to help run First National Bank and Trust Company, which his father had purchased in 1964. Mark Landrum’s role in the family business grew until he took majority ownership of the company in 1994. Mark Landrum was the third generation in the family banking business. His grandfather, Marquis Lafayette Landrum, purchased the Bank of Mountain View in Missouri in 1909. In 1936, Mark’s father, Carl, purchased the First State Bank of Tishomingo in Oklahoma from J.W. Walker. Mr. Walker would later become Carl’s father-in-law, after he met and married local teacher and artist, Ruth Walker. From these two original banks, the family’s enterprise grew to cover many small to medium size towns in Oklahoma, Texas and Southern Missouri and joined with the Columbia bank to make Landmark Bank in 2009. Mr. Landrum’s entrepreneurial leadership through this period of expansion is unparalleled and resulted in a healthy, thriving bank operating in three states. In addition to his distinguished professional career, he carried his mother’s great love of music and the arts throughout his life and he donated many works to the communities served by his banks. His personal collection, along with the acquisitions he made for the Bank, comprise one of the finest private collections of contemporary ceramics, glass, wood, and other formed objects, as well as very fine pieces by Midwest artists, Italian paintings and a noteworthy collection of antiquities. The memorial garden at Murray State College, Tishomingo, Oklahoma, recently developed in memory of his mother, is a current and future home of many of his pieces. The Chamber Music Series within the University of Missouri Concert Series exists today largely because of his steadfast support. He felt the banks should be places customers and the public could view fine art and filled them full as a contribution to the overall cultural health and edification of the community. This public art collection contains works ranging from intellectual and introspective pieces to more approachable art. Similarly, Mark viewed architecture as art and strived to create bank buildings that exuded a warm and unpretentious business environment-buildings that both made a statement and were pleasant to view and inhabit. He had a love of life, which was a driving force of his fascination with music (opera and ballet), literature, history and culture of the world. His curious and adventurous nature made him a pilot, a sailor, and a traveler. Mr. Landrum followed an unpretentious lifestyle that reflected the values of the common man, all the while accomplishing a life most uncommon. Despite the many demands of widely dispersed business interests, investments, and properties, his heart drew him ever back to the roots and legacy of his family. He is survived by his wife, Yulia and young daughters, Veronika and Valeria, of the home, as well as adult children, Rebecca Landrum, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Michael Landrum, of Washington, D.C., David Landrum, John Landrum, of Columbia, Missouri, Jennifer Landrum, of Haines, Alaska, and Lara Landrum, of Columbia, Missouri. He is also survived by his sister, Brenda Bingham, of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and three grandchildren, Montana and Costi, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rose, of Columbia, Missouri. He was preceded in death by his parents and one grandchild, Valentin. The memorial service will be held on Saturday, September 1, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. in the Fletcher Auditorium on the campus of Murray State College in Tishomingo. A visitation will be held on Friday, August 31, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at Clark Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to East Central University Foundation, Ada, and Murray State College Foundation, Tishomingo. Under the direction of Clark Funeral Service of Tishomingo.
Having grown up in a small Oklahoma county and an oil field town in eastern New Mexico, I lived on ranches, riding horses before I could walk, wrapped coins and filed checks in banks, traveled each summer around the west, played on two state championship basketball teams under the coach who won the most games in basketball history, and when I took the train freshman year to Yale, I crossed the Mississippi for the first time, and learned to tie a tie.
After graduation:
Service to country: infantry officer, platoon leader and company commander, United States Army Europe 1962-1964.
Further education: Harvard Law School 1964-1967.
Profession: Attorney, Reno, Nevada 1967-1968; Attorney, New York City 1968-1970.
Business: Owner, president, and now chairman of really good down-home banks in 25 small cities and towns in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, 1970 to present.
Rancher, Oklahoma 1970 to 1988.
Personal: Married four times, two wonderful women from New Haven and two from eastern Europe; eight children.
Activities: Collecting art and antiquities — (1) contemporary ceramics and other formed objects (among the largest and finest private collections in the world), (2) modern and contemporary Italian paintings, (3) antiquities from Africa, south and central America, and Asia.
Accumulated 9,000 adventurous hours flying an assortment of airplanes. Boated oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams.
Ran 20 marathons: finishing notably 34th in Chicago, 128th in NYC, and with a 2:31 time at age 40.
Mountain hiking, including all the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado EXCEPT Mt. Yale.
Much travel: primarily southern and eastern Europe; the countries that hold together Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; South America; and all over North America.
Chased women.
Adhering daily to fitness and health.
Regrets: Many, most of which I brag about.
Mistakes: Experiencing life’s wonders to the hilt rather than specializing for achievement, to paraphrase Hank Williams, living a life of “fast cars, young women, and old whiskey.”
Notable times: The Summer of Love and Telegraph Avenue riots in 1968 in Berkeley with our late classmate Jim Stack.
Meeting with two of the most evil people in the world: Vladimir Putin and Nancy Pelosi.
Meeting with two of the most egotistical and incompetent people in the world: Harry Reid and Barrack Obama (I have not yet met Sarah Palin).
Meeting with many of the greatest people in the world: Mstislav Rostropovich, the Queen of Spain and her daughter, the first baseman Bush, and Ruth Duckworth and Heda Kovaly (both of whom could attest how the evil of so few can destroy the wonder of so many), etc.
Trips to Wal-Marts in small country cities and towns. High school football games. Sunday and Wednesday church suppers.
Detestations: The East, politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, and the NY Times. Secret Societies at Yale.
Hopes: (1) The opening of our boundaries to many more visitors and immigrants. (2) The rapid replacement of those weak avatars of the NY Times, Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, with good, rational, strong people unencumbered by political whimsy (unlike Sarah Palin).
THE GREATEST ASPIRATION OF ALL: Living to attend the high school graduation of our new twin daughters (scheduled to be born during the class reunion) into an America with traditional values of self-reliance and responsibility and with hope and opportunity unfettered by Washington, unions, and left- and right-wing idiots.