CAMDEN, Maine — Charles Cawley, who co-founded a company that became an international credit card giant and whose philanthropy became legendary in Maine, died early Wednesday morning in Camden, where he has had a home for more than 20 years.
“He loved Maine. He loved the people of Maine,” his wife, Julie Cawley, said Wednesday.
Cawley’s credit card company and his corporate and personal generosity helped transform the state, especially in the midcoast area, where MBNA employed thousands. Many of those former employees mourned the news of his death and remembered the changes he helped to bring to their lives and to their communities.
One of those employees is George Gould of Waldoboro, a 66-year-old former lobsterman and guard at the old Maine State Prison in Thomaston. Gould said he grew up in an “absolutely blue-collar” family and never dreamed the kind of work environment he found at MBNA existed when he was hired to be a security guard at the company during its first year in Camden in 1993.
At first, the sometimes glitzy corporate culture of MBNA, where call-center workers dressed in business casual attire and where rock ’n’ roll giant Chubby Checker was a repeat performer at the annual corn boil extravaganzas, seemed strange to Gould. But Cawley’s philosophy that the customer always came first and that employees ought to do their best at every job they were given made a deep impression on the security guard.
“It was the greatest company to work for,” Gould said Wednesday. “Mr. Cawley changed my life, no question about that. I became aware that everything I did had a purpose. I had to try to succeed, no matter what the task was. It gave me the foundation that I needed to get to the next part of my life and to get some financial security. I have just the utmost respect for him, even more so now looking back. Where would I have been without MBNA? I don’t have an answer for that.”
Though he grew up in New Jersey, Cawley, 75, spent summers in Maine as a teenager at his grandparents’ home in Lincolnville, and he continued to visit Maine as an adult. The Cawleys spent their honeymoon 52 years ago in the Camden area, Julie Cawley said Wednesday, and he never lost his connection to the state.
But his financial career began elsewhere. In 1982, Charles Cawley helped found the Maryland Bank National Association. Later, he created MBNA, based out of Wilmington, Delaware, from the bank’s credit card division. The new company found its niche in the crowded field of credit card lenders by marketing the cards to a select group of consumers. This practice, known as affinity lending, meant organizations such as universities or professional associations would endorse specific credit cards to its employees, alumni and other connected people.
The affinity cards were hugely successful, and MBNA began a dramatic expansion that, by the early 1990s, led Cawley back to Maine — to the former Knox Woolen Mill in downtown Camden, specifically. As Mainers struggled to get on their feet after the recession of 1991, the credit card company had no shortage of eager job applicants.
In May 1993, 75 new employees started at the renovated woolen mill, a number that expanded exponentially within just a few years. The company purchased adjacent residential properties to accommodate the growth. However, when it announced a major expansion plan in 1995, some in Camden opposed the move, saying MBNA’s increasingly dominant presence was in danger of overshadowing the picture-postcard, tourist-attracting downtown.
Belfast Mayor Walter Ash, then a city councilor, heard about MBNA’s difficulties to the south, especially the problems corporate officials were having at Knox County Regional Airport with their fleet of corporate jets. He made a public statement that the company and its planes would be welcomed in Belfast, a community 18 miles north that had been hit hard by the recent demise of its chicken, shoe and sardine-processing industries. Within days, he said, Belfast officials heard back from interested MBNA executives.
“It was the beginning of a lot of things that happened in the community,” he said.
It seemed that overnight, the high unemployment rate dropped and the city’s scruffy waterfront got spiffed up when Cawley and his company came to Belfast. MBNA’s Waldo County building spree included state-of-the-art ballfields, Belfast Boathouse, the Point Lookout corporate retreat in Northport and the Hutchinson Center in Belfast, which they leased to the University of Maine for just $1 a year.
“Who’d have thought we’d have a college in Belfast?” Ash asked. “That wouldn’t have happened without Charlie and MBNA. Everything he touched made an impact on the whole community.”
Elsewhere in Maine, MBNA call centers geared to part-time employment opened in Orono, Portland, Rockland, Brunswick, Farmington, Fort Kent and Presque Isle. The company also built a gleaming waterfront center in Rockland, which now is the home of Boston Financial Data Services.
When Cawley retired as CEO of MBNA at the end of 2003, the company employed about 28,000 people, including nearly 5,000 in Maine, and had assets of $52.86 billion.
“Charlie Cawley left an indelible mark on this state,” Peter Vigue, chairman and CEO of Cianbro Corp., said Wednesday of his friend. “He had a profound effect not only on the economy but on the people of the state of Maine.”
Moreover, Cawley did not make his million-dollar donations to nonprofits, schools, libraries, scholarship funds and more in order to draw attention to himself, Vigue said, but because he wanted to get results. When Cawley decided that Camp Roosevelt in Clifton needed a new sports field, the CEO built the field but didn’t want his name on it or any recognition for his efforts.
“The question you had to ask yourself was why was he doing this? Why?” Vigue mused. “It wasn’t always about MBNA. It was always, in many cases, about the greater good. There’s so many stories and examples of this. He impacted the lives of his employees. He treated them very well, and at the same time the company he led flourished. The indirect effects of the employees, the company and what he built — it’s immeasurable. Impossible to measure. You can’t do it.”
But Cawley — and the credit card industry as a whole — certainly were not without their critics. Some former employees interviewed during or after the era of MBNA talked about the pressure to lend customers ever more money, sometimes more than the customers could reasonably hope to repay. According to a 2004 New York Times investigation, the company’s practices reaped dividends, becoming one of the 50 most profitable companies in America under Cawley’s leadership. In 2003, it turned a profit of $2.34 billion. And some of the money was spent, according to the New York Times, on supporting federal legislation for the Bankruptcy Reform Act, which would make it tougher for people to escape their credit card debt. The bill was signed into law in 2005 by President George W. Bush, another recipient of Cawley’s largesse, with the credit card CEO contributing $350,000 to the president’s 2004 re-election efforts.
Back up north, some of Cawley’s reported extravagances occasionally rubbed thrifty Mainers the wrong way. In a 2004 BDN interview, former Camden reporter Doug Hufnagel recalled stories about the company planting — then immediately cutting down — $25,000 oak trees, saying that a lot of locals “were offended” by the waste. Cawley and MBNA also were known for spending abundant sums of money on art, airplanes, yachts and fancy automobiles.
Those free-spending habits may have helped hasten Cawley’s retirement from MBNA in 2003, in a post-Enron era which was marked by calls for corporate accountability, according to the New York Times. After Cawley left MBNA, the company’s new leadership started to downsize both corporate and philanthropic spending. MBNA closed facilities in Camden, Rockland and Northport in 2004 and 2005, and Bank of America bought the remaining holdings in 2006.
More than a decade after Cawley stepped down from the helm of MBNA, his contributions to the state — both of the tangible and intangible varieties — remain invaluable. Former Maine Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday recalled Cawley’s generosity to Maine, saying he once hosted the businessman, the president of the University of Maine and artist Jamie Wyeth at the Blaine House for lunch. The meal ended with a big dessert for the university, which wanted to expand its art school. Cawley contributed $1 million to the effort.
Baldacci also recalled that Cawley worked hard to make sure buildings that were closed after Bank of America purchased them would be turned into other employment-creating facilities.
“He was a unique individual. He cared deeply about the state of Maine,” Baldacci said.
The Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland also issued a statement on Cawley’s death.
“Charlie and Julie Cawley’s leadership and generosity towards this museum were transformative. His tremendous philanthropy towards this institution can be seen concretely in the museum’s Wyeth Center and our Morehouse Wing, both of which his generosity allowed us to build. And he inspired others to deeds of generosity as well. It was only this past June that the museum received its single largest gift ever, by the Wyeth Foundation, given in honor of Charles and Julie Cawley. He will be greatly missed,” the museum stated.
Susan Hunter, president of the University of Maine, said that his gifts to the university were tremendous.
“Charlie was an amazing, thoughtful leader whose transformational vision for Maine, coupled with his generosity, made possible such valuable regional resources as UMaine’s Hutchinson Center in Belfast,” Hunter said. “His dedication to Maine also is evident on the state’s flagship campus, helping make UMaine arts and other areas even more valuable assets to the state. He was truly an inspiration who has left a legacy in Maine.”
The legacy of the big-spending and big-dreaming Cawley will live on in Maine for years to come, according to many.
“He left an indelible mark on people like myself and others that really sent a very clear message to us about what could be achieved when you raised the standards,” Vigue said. “And that anything was possible.”
A funeral is expected to be held Saturday at the Lady of Good Hope in Camden, with funeral arrangements being made by Burpee, Carpenter and Hutchins Funeral Home in Rockland.