RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. – Wallace M. Haselton, 89, retired chairman and chief executive officer of Key Bank Shares of Maine, died Aug. 1, 2011, of natural causes in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. He lived in Maine, Florida and California since his retirement in 1984. He was born in 1922, in Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Haselton graduated from Reading (Mass.) High School and was recruited for the Clark University basketball team with a four-year NCAA scholarship. His attendance was delayed because of a serious operation and, in the interim, he went to work as a bench boy messenger at National Shawmut Bank of Boston, attending Boston University Evening College of Commerce to keep his academic credentials up to date. Before he could attend Clark University, Pearl Harbor took place. He was accepted into the U.S. Navy Air Corps V-5 Pilot Training Program in early 1942, and attended the University of North Carolina for preflight training. He completed Primary Flight School in Hutchinson, Kan., and subsequently received his wings at Corpus Christi (Texas) Naval Air Station. He flew more than 50 missions out of Dunkeswell, England, in four-engine B-24 Liberator Navy Patrol Bombers. He was awarded five Air Medals, and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for an attack on a German submarine, using intricate secret equipment. He returned to the National Shawmut Bank in January 1946. In 1949 he joined the Andover National Bank as vice president. In 1952 he returned to active duty during the Korean War and served in the Pentagon as administrative assistant to the chief of Naval Air Intelligence. Returning to Andover National Bank, he was named chief executive officer in 1954 and was cited by the comptroller of the currency as the youngest CEO of a national bank. He initiated several bank mergers before he left Andover in 1964 to become president and CEO of Depositors Trust Co., Maine’s largest bank. In 1966 he formed Depositors Corp., the first bank holding company in the Northeast since 1936, using the “phantom” bank technique that was adopted as the way to put together individual banks into a Registered Bank Holding Co. In 1972 he introduced the first legislation in the U.S. that allowed interstate banking to go across state lines, using the provisions of the Douglas Amendment to the Bank Holding Company Act of 1960. This gradually grew across the U.S., thus enabling groups of states to develop interstate bank holding companies pacts. The Association of Bank Holding Companies referred to Haselton as the “Father of Interstate Banking.” In the 1970s he became a director and consultant to Bond Stores, then the nation’s largest retailer of men’s apparel. He also acted as a consultant to S & H Green Stamps in their bank acquisition program of diversification. In 1983 after action by the New York State Legislature in adopting the interstate bank legislation he had developed, Depositors Corp. merged into KeyCorp., and became Key Bank Shares of Maine. In 1988 he completely retired from KeyCorp., but retained his relationship with UST Corp., a Massachusetts’ bank holding company and owner of United States Trust of Boston. This was a bank holding company he was instrumental in forming in 1970. He served as a director for more than 25 years. After the early 1990 northeast bank recession he served as chairman of the Search Committee for a new chief executive officer of United States Trust Corp. He was chairman of the Oversight, Audit and Asset Quality Committee until his retirement in 1999. He spent the next 10 years of his life working to get Enhanced External Counter Pulsation machines strategically located across the U.S. to provide patients with a safe and effective non-invasive treatment for stable and unstable angina, angioplasty, bypass, congestive heart failure and heart transplant. During his lifetime, Mr. Haselton served on numerous charitable and public service boards and received citations from Massachusetts and Maine governors, U.S. Sen. and Secretary of State Ed Muskie, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
He is survived by his wife, his three daughters, his seven grandchildren and his six great-grandchildren.