Talk about a bank expanding its reach

Islander Susanne Grossman waves her Iberia Bank fan in front of what used to be Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, the famous cold war security point to the communist east. Randle Grossman / submitted

Among the finalists in the Iberia Bank "Fan Club" photo contest is this one of Marco's Barbara Evans getting to know a couple of India's many snake charmers. Submitted

Islander Barbara Evans borrowed this Indian elephant to help her stay cool with the Iberia Bank fan. Submitted

Talk about a bank expanding its reach.

Winners are being chosen today in a local contest with international impact, so to speak.

We refer to the Iberia Bank Fan Club contest, in which patrons of the bank and others carried fans with the bank logo on them as they traveled far and wide.

“Out of the many entries we have chosen 13 finalists,” explains Iberia Bank VP and Manager Keith Dameron. “These Marco Islanders go to some world famous places with world famous landmarks and then add the Iberia Bank fans to the scenery there.”

Some people took multiple photos, seemingly everywhere from A (the Azores) to Z (Zanzibar). Well that may be a bit of columnists’ license, but the collection that has been on display in the bank lobby includes pictures from some of the world’s most interesting places.

“Some people even told us they hadn’t heard about the contest when they went to this or that exotic destination and wish they could go back with their bank fans,” Keith says.

He also had to rule out photos sent in that had no recognizable or identifiable landmark or other famous place.

People have been streaming into the bank to see the array of photos.

“They’ve been interested by the display and are happy to vote for the ones they like,” Keith says.

The Islanders who took the winning photos will be happy too. There will be several prizes of goodie bags full of as yet undetailed stuff, courtesy of the bank. And the first prize will be a camera, the Nikon Digital Coolpix P-500.

The winners are being notified now and we congratulate them on some cool photo memories of some hot travel.

The next level of taking the ‘fan’ on tourist trips

The concept of taking home with you on a trip, in the form of fans or newspaper headlines, etc., appears to be an increasingly popular feature of many people’s travel souvenirs.

A friend who owns a newspaper in Georgia runs such photos of readers every week and says he has at least a year or two backlog of submitted pictures with people holding up his newspaper while visiting this or that wonder of the world.

Even more fun, we think, is the practice of some friends whose mother was too frail to make family extensive family vacations.

Wanting her to always know she was missed on subsequent trips, they carried a great full-sized, head and shoulders photo of their dear mother on a fan, not unlike the Iberia Bank fans on a stick.

At every photo op stop, they’d hold up Bernice’s likeness so she would be part of the group.

Chris Curle is a former news anchor for CNN and for ABC-TV stations in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Houston. E-mail chris@chriscurle.com.

Don is a former ABC News correspondent and bureau chief and a former news anchor for CNN and ABC-TV in Atlanta. His Farmer File column appears Fridays in the Naples Daily News. E-mail: don@donfarmer.com.