Early life
LaVannes father, Arthur, died when LaVannes was only 3 years old and he also lost three of his siblings due to poor health issues; his mother had only received an education as far as the fifth grade. Squires said his mother had immense pride which showed in her stern opposition toward handouts of any nature; she continued to work harder and harder, eventually their lives got better. His mother remarried but later divorced and moved to Planeview, Kansas from Oklahoma to work in manufacturing plants during World War II to produce war supplies; after the war they moved to Planeview, Kansas. Attributing to his mother and her hard work ethic, LaVannes developed hard working skills through fillingAcademics and athletics
During the 1940s, Squires looked youthful, stood barely over six feet tall, and weighed about 180 pounds; however as a teenager he was very meager. At the time of his senior year at Wichita East High School, LaVannes was still very small but a good athlete; he earned the nickname “After college
LaVannes Squires graduated from the University of Kansas in 1954 with a Bachelor of Science in Business degree with a major in business administration. He again, just like in high school, graduated in the top ten percent of his graduating class. Squires ended up working for the “Look” Magazine Subscription Office in Des Moines as a junior accountant. A friend of the Kansas men's basketball team, who managed the office, hired Squires. He later moved on after a year and a half in which he moved up the ladder in the accounting department of the magazine office to an assistant and then later on to the manager.Young, Andrew Sturgeon. "Anniversary Celebration." Los Angeles Sentinel: 2. Oct 31 1974. ProQuest. Web. 6 May 2013.Career
Squires was the President of the Bank of Finance which celebrated its tenth anniversary on November 16, 1974; he fixed the bank to make it more fiscally sound and able to abide to business policies. The bank had 1,300 stockholders which for the first time on August 29, 1974 received their first check that represented the first share paid by the Bank to its holders. He started as the Chief Executive at Bank of Finance in 1964; employed 68 employees when the bank was ranked at number seven in “Black Enterprise: Top 100” in 1975. The “Black Enterprise” list in June 1975 was the third time that the magazine had compiled a list of the 100 largest “black-owned and/or black managed businesses in the United States.” Despite the original growing pains the Bank had to endure in order to become a good business, it still prides itself on the ideal to fill in the economic gaps that existed in the black community. The Bank of Finance had provided financial assistance for the “creation of medical centers, day care centers, homes for the aged, and a greater number of multiple-unit housing complexes.” They return the money to the local community that they earn from the businesses in the form of payroll purchases. Before the success of the Bank of Finance, Squires was with the Douglass State Bank in Kansas City, Kansas as a teller for ten years after his accounting job with the magazine. He moved up to Executive Vice-President and then later formed a bank with four other men called the Swope Parkway National Bank in Kansas City, Missouri. The bank opened in July, 1968 amounted up to $14.5 million while he was there and he later moved on to San Diego where another bank was being planned. Edward Tillmon, the past president of the Bank of Finance, brought Squires to the bank as Executive Vice-President. At a point around the 70s, Squires opened up a real estate company called, L.C. SQUIRES REAL ESTATE COMPANY, INC. in Los Angeles but it was suspended in 1982. Squires died on February 19, 2021, at age 90, inReferences
{{DEFAULTSORT:Squires, LaVannes C. 1931 births 2021 deaths African-American basketball players American men's basketball players Basketball players from Missouri Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball players Date of birth missing 20th-century African-American sportspeople 21st-century African-American people