Harold Gilkeys older brother got the first glimpse of his siblings business savvy when Harold was 6 years old.


The older Gilkey, Duane, had set up a lemonade stand near the familys home in Livingston, Mont., then turned the operation over to Harold, who is four years younger, and moved on to a more lucrative yard-work stint.


One day, the older Gilkey came home to find one of his little brothers friends working the lemonade stand. He learned soon thereafter that young Harold had other kids working at six stands around town and was supplying each with lemonade in exchange for a cut of their sales.


He had a little franchise going right there in Livingston, Duane Gilkey says. I wasnt surprised when he put together the Sterling empire.


Far removed from the beverage business, Harold Gilkey is chairman and CEO of Sterling Financial Corp., the holding company for Sterling Savings Bank, the largest bank based in Spokane.


Gilkey co-founded Sterling Financial with William Zuppe in 1981, and, after completing a $2.3 million stock offering two years later, opened the first Sterling Savings branch, across Wall Street from Sterlings present-day corporate headquarters.


A number of acquisitions and expansions later, the bank has more than $6 billion in assets and operates 134 branches in four Northwest states.


Neither the 64-year-old Gilkey nor the bank he leads have any intention of slowing down.


My father once told us that if you look at somebodys history, you can reasonably predict the future, Gilkey says. If you look at the bank, I think the same thing could be said of it. There are size increases available to us.


Look at Gilkeys history, and theres no indication of him ever slowing down, either.


Born in Livingston in 1939, Gilkey grew up in that small, windy central Montana town as the son of a railroad conductor and a railroad cafeteria cook. His Depression-era parents stressed the importance of education, hard work, and earning a good living. Gilkey played basketball and football, and was active in club activities, in high school before graduating and going on to the University of Montana, in Missoula.


Considering himself a numbers guy and finding finance more fascinating than accounting, Gilkey majored in finance and was successful academically, being chosen for a prestigious academic club called the Silent Sentinel.


Meantime, he met a young student named Priscilla L. Pickard, and the two were married between Gilkeys junior and senior years.


During the summer of 1962, following his graduation from college, the couple loaded all their possessions into their 1950 Chevy and a small U-Haul trailer and moved to Orange County, in Southern California.


There, Gilkey entered the management-trainee program at Bank of America, and the pace really picked up for him.


During the next 12 years, Gilkey held 14 positions with Bank of America. He started as an assistant operations officer at a branch in Paramount, Calif., and worked his way up to become a regional manager for the Palm Springs area.


While Gilkey aggressively moved up the corporate ladder, he and Priscilla had two daughters, Michelle and Susan.


A few years after the girls were born, Gilkey enrolled in the University of Southern Californias master of business administration program, taking classes at night after working all day.


On days that he had school, Gilkey says hed go to work at 6 a.m. and get home at 10:30 p.m. Despite the busy schedule, Gilkey received four promotions while in school.


It was a wonderful experience, he says. I think anybody who has a chance should do the same thing.


Later, he took an executive-development course at Harvard University, where he spent one month at the school each summer for three years.


Duane Gilkey, who at 68 is managing partner of an Albuquerque, law firm, recalls getting a phone call from his younger brother during that time about a particularly exciting transaction. Comedy legend Bob Hope had built a house in Palm Springs, and had asked Bank of America to send someone up to talk about a loan. The younger Gilkey told his brother that he went to Hopes house and chatted casually with him for awhile, then brokered a deal to loan Hope millions of dollars to furnish his new house.


He was born a promoter, the older Gilkey says. He has the innate ability to put things together.


After 12 years in Southern California, however, Gilkey wanted to return the Northwest. In 1974, he accepted a job as president of Bancshares Mortgage Co., a unit of Spokane-based Old National Bancorporaton.


Gilkey held that position for four years, and during his tenure, Bancshares assets grew to $200 million, from $18 million. He then moved on to a position with ONB for a couple of years before being lured to Oregon Bank in 1981.


Just weeks after Gilkey moved to Portland, however, Oregon Bank was acquired, and Gilkeys new position appeared to be going away.


It was then that Gilkey decided to return to Spokane and launch a new bankSterlingwith Zuppe, a colleague from his Old National Bank days.


Dave Wallace, a Spokane businessman, had gone to Gilkey during his ONB days to borrow money so that he could acquire a grocery store. When Gilkey and Zuppe wanted to start Sterling, they went to Wallace for an initial investment, and Wallace quickly cut a check for $10,000.


If you have to ask why, you dont know Harold, says Wallace, who now serves on Sterlings board of directors. The guy is exceptionally dynamic. Hes one heck of a banker.


In its early years, Sterling grew largely by acquiring failing savings and loan operations through an arrangement with federal regulators in which the thrifts bad debt was counted as good will on Sterlings books, Gilkey says. In 1989, however, Congress passed a regulatory act for financial institutions abolishing good will and forcing financial institutions to count those old losses as such.


It made Sterling an insolvent institution, Gilkey says.


Federal regulators moved to shut Sterling down, but the company successfully argued in U.S. District Court for a restraining order and was able to remain in business. The company held a stock offering in late 1991 and was able to remain financially stable from then on.


Sterling brought a lawsuit against the federal government over the dispute, and litigation over the matter is ongoing.


Today, Gilkey says he typically works about 11 hours a day and travels 30 weeks out of the year. Whether hes in or out of town, much of his work day involves spending time talking with Sterling employees and customers. When in Spokane, he frequently tries to have lunch with employees at Sterlings headquarters building cafeteria.


In his spare time, Gilkey has been involved in several civic and charitable organizations, including the Downtown Spokane Partnership, the Hutton Settlement, and the University of Montana Foundation. He also serves on the board of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle.


During the winter months, he and Priscilla spend several weeks in the Palm Springs area, where he enjoys playing golf, but Gilkey says he keeps in close contact with other Sterling executives through electronic communications.


Though he is somewhat a snowbird who is nearing conventional retirement age, Gilkey says he has no plans to quit anytime soon. As long as the banks board feels hes effective, hell stay, he says.


I work at the will of a board of directors, and as long as they and I feel like I contribute, Ill be here, he says.