AGOURA HILLS : Banker, 89, Is a Teller of Tales of Great Interest

Banker Ed DeSure’s colleagues told him he was crazy when, at the age of 72, he left a high-paying job to become a Peace Corps volunteer.

“I told them, ‘I’m a happier man than you are; I’m doing what I want to do,’ ” he recalled recently.

DeSure was sent to Botswana, where he ran a trade school for that country’s youth. Despite the hardships he faced in Africa, he said, he has never regretted his decision. “I have always been interested in helping youth,” he said.

DeSure, now 89, was honored recently by Charter Pacific Bank in Agoura Hills, where he works as a community development officer. DeSure--who said he is too young to retire--has had a college scholarship fund named after him.

DeSure has also made a name for himself as a successful entrepreneur. He was one of several founders of the now-defunct, Buena Park-based Mercury Savings Bank, which at its peak had 31 branches. DeSure also founded the DeSure Furniture Store in Los Angeles, now also out of business.

“I think he has about the most fascinating history of anyone I have ever known,” said Alan Roubik, an Agoura Hills-based music composer, who wants to commission a book about DeSure’s life. Roubik has a particular interest in the 1940s, a period in which DeSure says he owned the Oasis Club, a famous Los Angeles night spot.

“I had the finest acts in the city: Frankie Laine, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald,” DeSure said.

Over the course of his life, he has developed into a storyteller extraordinaire. His favorite is about high adventure in the Yukon.

During World War II, DeSure recalled, a mysterious stranger entered his club wanting to know which place in the world DeSure would like to visit most. The Yukon, answered DeSure, and the stranger--who seemed to be employed by the U.S. government--returned the next day, offering to take him there in a plane.

What followed has more plot twists than an English spy thriller, with snow-blind Russian pilots and murky enemy agents, who ply DeSure with liquor in a vain effort to get him to talk. After DeSure returned home days later, the FBI knocked on his door, demanding the photos DeSure took of a Yukon airfield, unaware it was a key military installation.

While he and his wife, Rose, were serving in Botswana, she unwittingly gave him away to a village woman, goes another of his stories. The woman, on meeting DeSure, had asked Rose if she could have him as a husband.

“We didn’t know the customs,” he said, and Rose, thinking it was a joke, told the woman she could indeed.

They realized their mistake too late, DeSure said, because, according to village customs, he was now officially the woman’s husband. The woman, realizing later she could not have him, became angry.

“She started making it tough on my wife, accusing her of different things,” DeSure said. “I’m still married to her.”

DeSure walks three miles a day to stay fit. “I want to live until I’m 112,” he said. “That way, my mortgage will get paid off.”