For over 40 years, Jerry battled to keep community banks open for business, and the responsibility could not have fallen on more prepared shoulders. But before he became the defender of independent banking in Missouri, Jerry gained a tenacity for a different kind of adventure: hunting for the lost treasure of Valverde in the Amazon jungle and on the slopes of the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. Legend claims the Valverde treasure was named after a Spanish soldier who married an lncan woman. Further, the story says Valverde was ostracized by his countrymen because of his wife. He often complained of poverty until one day, she promised to make him the richest of the Spaniards. That night, she led him by hidden trails through the mountains until they reached a glittering cavern filled with a vast treasure of Incan gold. Just a small portion of the wealth made Valverde immeasurably wealthy. RETIRED MIBA EXECUTIVE PASSES AWAY A TRIBUTE TO JERRY SAGE JERRY SAGE, RETIRED EXECUTIVE OF THE MISSOURI INDEPENDENT BANKERS ASSOCIATION, DIED SEPT. 3, 2022. At his death, Valverde willed the map — showing the location of the treasure — to the king of Spain. Afterward, however, representatives of the king repeatedly failed to find the treasure. Many more treasure hunters also failed, as they were unable to endure the biting cold of the high altitudes of the Andes or they could not penetrate the Amazon jungle. Jerry Sage was in those mountains in 1967. His expedition climbed to 16,000 feet above sea level. After more than 40 days in the jungle, natives serving as guides got cold feet. “According to legend, there were cannibalistic Indians guarding the treasure. So, one night our guides decided they weren’t going to stay with us anymore,” Jerry said. “They got up in the middle of the night, stole our gas stoves and took off. That was the most frightening moment I ever spent in the jungle.” In the cold and wet mountains, it was very hard to build a fire. “We thought we had rice and double smoked bacon. We found what we thought was rice was actually raw peanuts,” said Jerry. “Luckily for us, water runs downhill and back toward civilization. The Amazon River wasn’t far away. After the bacon, we ate the moss that grew at the base of the trees. It took us 12 days to get out.” Despite his close call, he made more expeditions in search of the lost treasure of Valverde before he was hired as the executive director of MlBA in 1975. There were more than 600 independent community banks in the state at the time. The man who had barely survived the Amazon jungle, but had the grit to return to try again, became responsible for the year-in-year-out fight to keep the number of community banks from dropping. Becoming a Lobbyist By the time Jerry Sage became executive director of MlBA — the oldest state independent banker’s association in the country — they had been fighting to keep large banks from branching into Missouri since 1958. The first time Jerry lobbied for the association was in 1975. He did it as a favor for a friend, Gene McFadin, an attorney who had been hired by MlBA as its lobbyist. Jerry remembers that first appearance in the state Senate as a comical one. “Gene was tied up with work from his law firm; he asked me to testify for him in a banking committee meeting. 24 | The Show-Me Banker Magazine
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