Edward A. Wayne
- President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, 1961–1968
- Born: March 22, 1903
- Died: December 3, 1990
Edward A. Wayne became the third president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on March 1, 1961 and retired on March 31, 1968.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Wayne was born in 1903. He began his banking career in 1918 at the age of fifteen as a runner for the National State Bank of Columbia, South Carolina. He went on to work for other banks in a variety of capacities, including bookkeeper, teller and cashier. From 1936 to 1940 he served as chief examiner for the South Carolina Board of Bank Control. In 1940, Wayne became executive secretary of the North Carolina Bankers Association.
Wayne joined the Richmond Fed in 1943 as vice president in charge of the Bank Examination Department and later became vice president of the Bank Relations and Public Information Department. He was named first vice president in 1953 and became president eight years later, succeeding Hugh Leach. During Wayne’s presidency, Richmond installed its first computers in 1962, the Federal Reserve marked its fiftieth anniversary from 1963 to 1964, and hired its first woman bank examiner, Charlotte Waldrop, in 1967.
Wayne spent a year in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s, advising the federal government on the development of new banking and fiscal policies. For several years, he was a faculty member of the American Institute of Banking at Rutgers University and gave speeches to students and bankers across the country.
Wayne was active in state, community and educational endeavors. He chaired the Wayne Commission, which recommended the establishment of Virginia Commonwealth University in 1968 from the merger of the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia. He was rector of Virginia State University in Ettrick and served as chairman of the United Way, the Children’s Home Society and a University of Richmond fundraising drive.
Wayne and his wife, Thelma, lived in Richmond and had one son and two daughters. He died in 1990 at the age of eighty-seven.
Written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. See disclaimer.
