Louis Glenn Collison, vice president of the First National Bank of Rantoul, is one of the youngest bankers of Champaign County, and has attained a distinctive position in business affairs which would be creditable to many older men.
Mr. Collison was born at Rantoul, August 30, 1894, a son of the late Fred Collison and Emma B. Collison. His mother is now Mrs. S. C. Tucker of Champaign.
Mr. Collison was liberally educated, attending the grammar and high schools at Rantoul, spent one year in the University of Illinois and one year in Northwestern University at Chicago, and also had a business course in the Gem City Business College at Quincy. His father’s death caused him to leave school and assume an active part in the management of his father’s estate.
He first became connected with banking as bookkeeper and director of the First National Bank at Rantoul, and in the fall of 1915, soon after his twenty-first birthday, was made assistant cashier and has been vice president since January, 1917. Mr. Collison has been a director in the First National Bank of Thomasboro, Illinois, since the summer of 1914, and has been a director in the First National Bank of Gilman for over a year. Thus his position makes him a factor in the financial life of Champaign County and he also has some valuable farm land in this county.
Mr. Collison is a Republican voter, a member of the Masonic order, of the Champaign County Country Club and the Church of Christ. March 2, 1916, at the home of the bride in Philo Township, he married Hazel Ursula Guard, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Guard. Her father was one of the early farmers of Champaign County. Mrs. Collison was educated in the Philo High School and also took a course in Brown’s Business College at Champaign. While exceedingly busy with his private affairs, Mr. Collison has not neglected the public welfare and recently he was one of the local men who secured the establishment of the Chanute Aviation Field at Rantoul.
The name Collison stands among the worthy names of those whose integrity of character and public spirited enterprise have contributed no small share toward the splendid achievements of men in our community. To Champaign County’s future success in the social, civic and economic enterprises it is highly important that our young men qualify themselves for the duties of life as they are called upon to fill the positions of their worthy predecessors among the ranks of men, and it is highly gratifying to the friends of the Collison family that the present head of the family has taken his place in the social, religious and commercial world, thus making himself a recognized factor in the community interests of this great county, of which her sons and daughters have every reason to be justly proud.