Stephen DiMeo’s story was the classic American success story. The son of Italian immigrants, he worked his way up from bank teller to bank president, then started the Bloomingdale Bank and Trust when he was in his 40s.
“He was a hard-working, determined man who had a dream and made it come true,” said his former wife, Mickie.
“He was a self-made guy,” said Matt Gambs, the bank’s chief operating officer. Mr. DiMeo, he said, was proud of knowing firsthand how a bank operated, from the bottom up.
Mr. DiMeo, 56, died of lymphoma Wednesday, March 10, in his home in Park Ridge, where he lived since the early 1980s.
Born in a small town in Italy, Mr. DiMeo was 5 when his parents immigrated to Chicago. A graduate of Lane Tech High School, he soon began working as a teller at Talman Bank in Chicago. While there, he took courses at Metropolitan Business College of Chicago.
About three years later he went to work at First National Bank of Schiller Park, where he stayed for nearly 20 years, working as a loan officer and eventually becoming bank president.
He left to start Bloomingdale Bank and Trust in 1991, which specialized in lending to manufacturers and small, family-owned businesses. Since opening in 1991, the bank has opened three branches: two in Park Ridge and one in Itasca.
“Mr. DiMeo was not a big-bank kind of guy. I used to joke that he ran our bank from his car,” said Gambs, noting that Mr. DiMeo was known for remembering the names of his customers.
Mr. DiMeo donated $5,000 of his own money to an effort to build a baseball field for children with disabilities in Roselle, Gambs said. An avid baseball player, Mr. DiMeo had hoped to be there when the children took the field in May, Gambs said.
Married in 1971, he and his first wife, Mickie, divorced 26 years later. He married his second wife, Lynn, in 1999.
Other survivors include two sons, David and Victor; three daughters, Kristyn, Jessica and Olivia; three brothers, Anthony, John and Danny; and two sisters, Josephine DiVito and Anna Rybak.
Services will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday in Cooney Funeral Home, 625 Busse Highway, Park Ridge. Mass will be said at 10 a.m. in St. Paul of the Cross Church, 320 S. Washington Ave., Park Ridge.
