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Romfh, Colorful Dependable Figure in Community's Life Winning nation-wide fame by his quiet, unassuming, yet always dependable work, Miami's "cocklebur country banker," Ed C. Romfh, president of the First National bank, is one of the city's most outstanding personalities. His whimsical humor, his reliable banking methods and the atmosphere of solidity about him have developed in the minds of people everywhere a sense of reliance. His success in these recent years of banking tragedies has been a beacon of light winning approval of the country's leaders; so much in fact, that he was talked of early this year for the post of secretary of treasury. More than anything else, perhaps, it was Romfh's unruffled reaction to the banking crisis in March that gave assurance to hundreds of depositors who were momentarily panic-stricken. His refusal to consider the problem as anything more than a temporary measure for inevitable improvement in banking had a powerful steadying influence. As mayor of Miami during the time when the 1926 hurricane struck, he inspired confidence in the city through this selfsame quality of looking forward. The story of his life has been told many times. One of the most amusing sketches of his career he told himself, at a meeting of the Miami Beach Committee of 100 last year. Ed Romfh came to Miami in 1898, when the city was filled with Spanish American war soldiers in encampment. "My brother asked me if I knew anything about banks and banking," he said in his Committee of 100 talk, "and I told him all I knew was how to run a boat, how to hunt and how to fish a little, but I got the job, and you don't hold a job in a boom, you own it." The embryo banker was only 19 then, but he kept faithfully at his job of keeping books for three and a half years. In December, 1902, the First National bank opened, with Ed Romfh as cashier. In 1910, he was elected president, and the capital was increased from $50,000 to $100,000. In 1921, business had grown so much a new building was needed, so the present one was selected, Miami's first steel skyscraper. The real estate boom in 1925 brought hectic days, Mr. Romfh recalls. Then came the collapse, which experience taught him would follow those above normal days. But through it all, Ed Romfh remained the same reliable country banker he always had been. There have been other panics in the years of Mr. Romfh's banking career. One of the most outstanding he recalls was that of 1907. The Fort Dallas National bank, organized in 1902, failed. Its organizers had erected the building in which the Bank of Bay Biscayne was stationed, and William Brown was president of the Fort Dallas and the Bank of Bay Biscayne. "The two national banks, a block apart in a town two blocks long, were undergoing the periodic examination by national bank examiners early in July," Mr. Romfh recalled recently. "I had reason to believe that the Fort Dallas was unsound, so in order to be prepared for any possible trouble, I went to Jacksonville the night of July 3 to get some cash. Of course July 4 was a holiday, the vaults in Jacksonville were closed and it was hard to get much currency, but I assembled all I could, rode a day coach back to Miami with $13,000 in an old suit case, and was amply prepared for business on the fifth, when the Fort Dallas did not open and we had a 'run' on our bank. That is the closest I ever came to running out of money, the only time in the history of this bank that I've been scared." In a few months, the panic really got under way, Mr. Romfh said, and was climaxed by the First National bank in St. Augustine paying off Miami employees with cashier's checks instead of cash. The bank was perfectly solvent, but happened to be short of currency. "On Monday, Nov. 18, there started a run on this bank which lasted six weeks," Mr. Romfh said. "We couldn't find out where the money went, though our safe deposit