ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ

Extra

 

October 2025

Alumnus finds meaning in lending side of banking

At one time, Chris Coke was unsure about his future, dabbling in the music scene but seeking something permanent. Today, he’s the executive vice president and chief lending officer for Western Bank, based in Lubbock.

A native of Lubbock who grew up in Wyoming, Chris and his family returned to the Hub City at age

15 and he graduated from Monterey High School in 1987. He followed many friends to Texas Tech, noting he had a lot of fun but didn’t accomplish much academically. He was also struggling personally.

“My dad passed away when I was 19, and I was struggling with what I wanted to do. I went into the Marines, then injured my ankle and got a medical discharge,” he recalled. “One I got out of the Marines, I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”

A longtime music lover, he found a band looking for a singer and guitar player and auditioned. They hired Chris to join them and they began playing country music covers all around West Texas. He made another friend and the two formed a new band called Renegade.

“We played on the road a few years, then came back to Lubbock. At that point I was burned out a bit from the travel,” Chris said. “I got a call from a place in Lubbock that wanted a house band, so we played at Country Live a few years. During this time I got married and we had a baby.”

Knowing it was time to settle down, he did some research and chose ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ’s Lubbock campus to finish his degree, drawn by the then-quarterly term schedule and night classes that allowed him to work during the daytime. Coke said he mostly took business classes but recalls the two required Bible classes being enjoyable as well.

After a few years of coursework, he earned a BSOE degree in general business in 2001. He found one professor particularly encouraging, and that motivated him to finish.

“I don’t think I could have done it without Ms. Valerie Tharp talking to me and keeping me going. I kept coming back until they told me I didn’t have to come anymore,” he laughed. “I give them a lot of credit because we needed that piece of paper to get a job. It was perfect for what I needed at the time.”

Drawing from his experience at American State Bank while at Texas Tech, Chris went back to ASB for a few years. He then applied for a job with the Department of Banking as an examiner, hired in 2003 and spending about five years there. He followed that stint with a time as a loan reviewer for Plains Capital Bank and then at ABC Bank in Lubbock.

In 2012, Chris decided he wanted to get into lending, so he took a position with First State Bank and moved north to Stratford. While the job provided good experience in the field, he found it hard to be away from home and moved back shortly to Lubbock, working for Centennial Bank as a lender, spending three years there.

While at ASB, Chris had worked with the brother of Dan Odom, whom he had helped get a job with the Department of Banking as well. In the between years, Dan’s family had purchased banks in Gruver and then in Lubbock, later branding them all under the Western Bank name. Wanting to work with Dan, who is now CEO and president, Chris soon joined the Western family.

“I came in October 2016 to open an loan production office while building the business there, and we established that with Randy Jordan,” Chris said. “We grew the bank quite a bit in that time. Then we added Amarillo and Plainview and merged Gruver State Bank into Western in 2019.

“Now, we’re knocking on the door of nearly a billion dollars in total assets. That’s a big threshold,” Chris added. “I’m proud of what we’ve done here. We opened a mortgage department when a lot of banks were running away from mortgages. We’ll be in a good position to help Lubbock with that.”

Chris became chief lending officer in ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ, working to help facilitate business and loans, and working with the various market presidents in that arena. Ultimately, he says, “My role is to help Dan keep growing the bank in whatever capacity that can be.”

Finally at home in his Western Bank role, Chris said there are many rewards to his job.

“I enjoy coming to work every day and work with great people. I get to

see what we’re growing and giving back to Lubbock in terms of bank functions and charity events we participate in. It’s great to have a job you love to go to every day,” he said. “It hasn’t always been that way for me, but here we have a really good culture of people that take care of each other and look after our employees. It’s a lot of fun to be here.”

But he is quick to give credit to those early years of exploration.

“Whatever success I’ve had is because of the time I spent at ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ and helping me get where I

need to be. When I got serious about it, ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ was there to get that done,” he said.

Oh, and that band that once was Chris’ sole job? He’s still playing with the same guys as Renegade, mostly private events and some regular gigs at Lubbock’s Silver Bullet or The Spoon. They also play at fundraisers, performing mostly country dance music covers from various decades. Chris is lead singer and plays the guitar.

Chris and wife Melissa, a teacher at All Saints Episcopal School, are members of First Christian Church. They have two children between them: Brett, who serves in the Marine Corps, and Macy, who works for the American Quarter Horse Association in Amarillo. They also have a one-year-old granddaughter.

 

 

Devotional: Compassion needed here

The dictionary gives about 30 synonyms for the word “compassion.” Words like sympathy, tenderness, tolerance, kindness and charity.

Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

The opposite of “That’s a tough situation. Hope somebody will help them.”

Sure, we can’t support every charity. But that doesn’t absolve us from supporting any to the extent we can – children’s hospitals, destitute animals, food for the hungry, wounded veterans, to name a few.

True compassion is demonstrated in action: We don’t just say to a sick friend, “I’m thinking about you.” We take a meal to their home, fold their laundry, clean the bathroom, listen to them

recount their physical woes.

Jesus demonstrated his compassion in healing the sick and feeding the hungry – the multitudes he probably didn’t know on a first-name basis, any more than we might feel compelled to help victims of natural disasters or great calamity even though we’ll likely never meet them. The book of Matthew recounts several instances of Christ feeling the suffering of those who came to hear him preach.

But Jesus also demonstrated compassion on an even more personal level when he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. John 11:35-36 says Jesus wept when he went to Lazarus’ grave. It made an impression on those who witnessed that deep emotion: “See how he loved him.”

Sometimes we learn details about the lives of our friends, our relatives, our business associates, our students – details that could push anyone’s heart to the breaking point.

That information may be gleaned by really knowing and caring about each person, treating each with dignity and respect, practicing empathetic listening.

As we feel led to help in whatever way we can to alleviate the problems and suffering of those “far away,” a whispered prayer might be: “God, you have been compassionate to me. Help me have that same spirit toward my friends and associates I see almost every day.”

Danny Andrews is a 1972 graduate of ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ and served as the director of Alumni Relations for ten years, retiring in 2016. He spent many years in newspaper reporting and as editor of the Plainview Daily Herald. Retired now in Burleson, Danny and wife Carolyn, a WBU Ex, have three children who all attended WBU: Brandon, EX, Kayla, EX, and Brad, BA'07. 

 

From the History Files

This month's history recap continues a series about some of the historic buildings on the main campus in Plainview, where ÁÔÆæÖØ¿ÚÊÓƵ was founded in 1908.

While most students on the Plainview campus have called various dormitories home over the decades, for a special group of students, "home" was the married student apartments located on the northwest corner of campus near the Hilliard Field. Three identical complexes were home to 8 apartments each, reserved early in their history for only married students. Allison-Conkwright, Goodpasture and Collier Halls are still in use today, with few changes over the decades. 

The three partially brick buildings were added in 1960 and 1961. In years where married students were quite common -- after wartime, for instance -- the apartments stayed full, as did some

temporary structures called homettes. But in the last few decades, students marriying in school or coming already married has declined to such degree that the apartments are more commonly used for seniors or honor students these days. Not much has changed in these structures over the years. The university picked up both the Llano Apartments on 7th and Oakland streets and the Marquis Apartments at 8th and Fresno and those also are home to married or older students.

 

Ìý