Ronald Spratling Jr., who started a bank in Holladay that grew over 50 years into a community institution, and became the first Black-owned bank in the Rockies in a 2025 acquisition, has died.

Spratling, founder of Holladay Bank & Trust, died at home Thursday, April 9, according to a local mortuary. He was 93.

The Bank of Holladay, now Holladay Bank & Trust, opened in March 1974. “We were the most unique bank around — I think we still are,” Spratling told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2025. “A lot of people do not like big banks. They just prefer small banks where they know people and people know them.”

Holladay Bank & Trust was that kind of bank for half a century. David Arnott, former executive director of Preservation Utah, said in 2025 that he visited the bank as a child with his mother, and “the teller would always give me a lollipop before we left.”

Spratling’s dreams of starting a bank started with his father, Ronald N. Spratling Sr., who owned one of the biggest businesses in town, Holladay Lumber. For years in the 1960s, Ronald Sr. tried unsuccessfully to launch a bank, according to Katie Spratling, Ronald Jr.’s daughter, who was Holladay Bank & Trust’s CEO from 2010 until its 2025 acquisition, and returned as interim CEO in February.

Spratling Jr. had served on a national bank’s advisory board, and often saw documents for loan applications. The people seeking those loans were “good people” in the community who were “creditworthy,” Spratling Jr. said — and the bank rejected them anyway.

“A lot of times, it was a small loan,” he said. “[Banks] had a minimum. … Minimum on cars, minimum on houses, and if they were not in that category, the loan was a reject. … I was going after the people other banks couldn’t or wouldn’t serve.”

In 1972, Spratling Jr. went to W. Smoot Brimhall, then the state’s commissioner of financial institutions, and applied to incorporate the Bank of Holladay. Spratling said he had $500,000 in capital — half of the $1 million Brimhall said he needed.

Brimhall, himself a community banker, was “sympathetic” to the proposal, Spratling said, so he broke agency rules and approved the bank. But Brimhall warned that if the bank showed losses after the first year, Spratling would have to raise extra money.

“I want you to know I’m putting my neck out,” Brimhall said, as Spratling recalled it a half-century later. “My staff thinks that we should stay with the million dollars, so make me look good.”

The Bank of Holladay opened in March 1974, in what The Salt Lake Tribune then reported were “temporary quarters” — a trailer, 12 feet by 50 feet — while the permanent bank offices were built. When the new building opened in November, Brimhall, the commissioner who stuck his neck out, helped cut the ribbon, which was made from currency.

For the bank’s first five years, Spratling said he ”wore multiple hats — president, loan officer, legal counsel, personnel officer,” all without pay, while his law practice kept him afloat. After a year, the bank recorded a small profit, and had more than $6 million in assets, The Tribune reported. Within seven years, the bank’s assets exceeded $14 million.

The bank offered some of the highest daily interest rates in the state, and stayed open on Saturdays — a rarity in an industry where “banker’s hours” meant closing by 3 p.m. on weekdays and being closed on weekends. The bank also hosted community events, like barbecues, retirement parties for employees, free kids’ checking accounts and family photo portraits.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Holladay Bank & Trust showed its community connections by being one of the first Utah banks to process Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The bank issued 123 PPP loans, worth $7.25 million, and all of them were paid back in full, a bank official told The Tribune, with no indications of fraud.

That success attracted the attention of Ashley Bell, CEO and chairman of the board of Redemption Holding Company, which in 2025 acquired Holladay Bank & Trust and renamed it Redemption Bank, the first Black-owned bank in the Rockies.

Katie Spratling compared Bell’s goals to her father’s. “Ashley’s vision for this bank continues [my dad’s] vision but in a different way,” she said. “It will further open the bank up to people that aren’t served by other banks.”

Ronald Nile Spratling Jr. was born Sept. 30, 1932, to Erma Leona Wolf Spratling and Ronald Nile Spratling Sr. He worked with his father at Holladay Lumber, while attending Granite High School. He served a mission in Uruguay for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Upon returning, he enrolled in the University of Utah, earning a bachelor’s degree and a law degree in five years, graduating in 1959.

Before launching the Bank of Holladay, Spratling Jr. served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Utah, and was counsel for the Utah Department of Business Regulation.

In 1957, he married Myrna Loretta Clark in the Salt Lake Temple. They had seven children together. They later divorced, and Myrna died in 2007. Ronald married Susan Jan Healey in 1990.

Ronald Spratling Jr. is survived by his wife, Susan; seven children, two step-children, 22 grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren. In addition to Myrna, a son-in-law, granddaughter and great-granddaughter died previously.

Memorial services were held earlier this week.

Note to readers • Former Tribune intern Sorina Szakacs, who reported on Redemption Bank’s acquisition of Holladay Bank & Trust, contributed to this article.