I stopped being the family bank, obviously. But more than that — I stopped believing that being capable meant being obligated. For thirty-nine years, my competence had been treated as consent: I could handle things, therefore I should, therefore I would, forever, no matter what was handed to me. Realizing that a family could take that logic all the way to forging my signature cured me of it completely.
I mentor younger officers now — especially the ones from families like mine, the reliable ones, the fixers, the strong ones who’ve been quietly turned into everyone else’s safety net. I teach them the financial-security side, how to protect their identity and their documents, because servicemembers are targeted for exactly this kind of fraud, sometimes by strangers and sometimes, as I learned, by the people closest to them.
