Local banker coaches hockey, smuggled Bibles

Craig McGonagle is involved in multiple community charities.

By Evan Spaulding

Published May 4, 2009

The day-to-day activities of bank employees do not usually include smuggling contraband into Communist bloc nations. But Craig McGonagle, a Columbia resident and UMB Bank vice president of commercial loans, is not your typical banker.

McGonagle has been active in Columbia for six years and in the banking community since his graduation from MU in 1979. Originally from Kirkwood, McGonagle lives with his wife, Deb, and their children Keegan, 13, and Ruth, 17.

Although he stays busy at UMB, McGonagle is involved with youth hockey. His son Keegan McGonagle plays for the Central Missouri Eagles, of which McGonagle is president.

McGonagle played for MU's hockey team while he was a student, but now his involvement with the game is as an assistant hockey coach for his son's team.

Deb McGonagle said although her husband loves the game, he is more interested in the mentoring aspects of his coaching role. She said McGonagle's goal is to instill virtues such as sportsmanship and self-control in the team.

"He sees it as an opportunity to mentor boys into young men," she said.

MU law professor Doug Abrams is also a coach with the team and has been a hockey coach for more than 40 years. Abrams has watched McGonagle coach for the last five years.

"Craig is superb with the kids, win, lose or draw," Abrams said.

Abrams said even though some people are good parents but not necessarily good coaches, McGonagle is both.

"His abilities as a coach are superior in my opinion because regardless of the score, he teaches them lessons not only about hockey but lessons that will last them long after they stop putting on skates," Abrams said.

McGonagle also works with various community service endeavors through the bank. Among the local charities that UMB benefits are the Ronald McDonald House and Coyote Hill, a Christian group home in Harrisburg.

At the bank, McGonagle oversees the commercial loan portfolio, solicits new customers and mentors junior lenders.

"And I try to play a lot of golf," McGonagle said.

McGonagle said commercial loans have decreased and the challenge is finding new businesses to become loan customers. Also, McGonagle said the economic downturn is starting to wear on businesses.

"We're seeing companies that weren't strong going into this economic downturn start to show some real weakness," McGonagle said. "We're not able to help them out at this point."

McGonagle and his wife are very active in their church community as well. Both Keegan and Ruth McGonagle attend local Christian schools, and the McGonagles have taught in the Children's Church program at Christian Fellowship Church in Columbia.

The McGonagles' faith extends further than Sunday school. In the months following the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, Craig McGonagle and and Deb McGonagle spent two weeks living in a Hong Kong safe house, which served as a base for a team of smugglers responsible for filling backpacks with contraband Christian Bibles and walking them through border checkpoints into China.

McGonagle said his wife worked for a contemporary Christian music station in St. Louis at the time.

"They were sponsoring a mission trip to smuggle Bibles in, so we hooked up with that," he said.

When across the border, the McGonagles would rendezvous with anonymous local Chinese nationals and deliver the Bibles via dead drops in lockers or underneath bathroom stalls.

"You never saw anybody's face," McGonagle said.

Although the operation was ultimately successful and nobody was arrested or deported, their experience was not without danger. McGonagle described a situation where he was held at gunpoint at a border checkpoint. McGonagle said the palpable tension was apparent in his wife's eyes, which were "as big as saucers."

The situation was resolved when McGonagle relinquished his illegal cargo to the border official.

This summer, McGonagle said his family's plans include hockey camp for Keegan, fixing up the house and maybe a college search vacation for Ruth.

"No smuggling Bibles this summer," McGonagle said.