The legend goes that it started from the trunk of a car.
In 1956, McGhee Tyson was still an active-duty Air Force base, Blount County was largely rural, and the airmen stationed there had few options when money ran short. So a handful of them did what servicemembers have always done — they improvised. They pooled their resources, handed out loans to their fellow airmen from whatever space they could find, and called it a credit union.
Seventy years later, Tennessee Military Federal Credit Union is still on Airbase Road, still run by a skeleton crew of five full-time and one part-time employee, and still doing exactly what those first airmen set out to do.
“There is no way on this planet that this credit union would have been here for 70 years if it wasn’t for our members,” said Amy Rimmer, the credit union’s part-time employee and outreach coordinator. “We want to celebrate our members for continuing to be members. We’ve got children. Now we’ve got grandchildren. Now we’ve got great-grandchildren. It’s like a family credit union because people’s families join.”
Humble Beginnings
The credit union officially opened June 21, 1956, under the name East Tennessee Military Association Federal Credit Union — ETMA for short. It was born out of necessity. Blount County offered little in those days, and the airmen couldn’t easily leave the base. So they turned inward, the way the credit union movement had always intended.
The first home was wherever they could find room — eventually a small space on base, near where the dining facility stands today. For years, the informal operation was managed by Chester Harper, an enlisted aircraft maintenance technician who ran the credit union as a volunteer, on top of his regular duties.
“He’d be at work, and he’d say, ‘Can’t come right now, I’m busy,'” recalled Carl Howard, who has been a member for 60 years and holds the 125th account ever opened. “He was just doing it out of the goodness of his heart.”
Harper’s advice to guardsmen was simple and direct: “Boys, if you’ll take your guard check and put it in the credit union and don’t touch it, you’ll never have to worry about a retirement.”
Harper’s son Larry said his father wanted nothing more than to serve his community — a spirit illustrated by the fact that the Little League field in Karns was named in Chester Harper’s honor for his years of work building it up.
Vera Harvey took the reins from Harper in 1985, the same year the credit union received its formal charter. By 1996, the operation had moved off base entirely, into the building on Airbase Road where it operates today — just steps from McGhee-Tyson’s perimeter fence.
Small but Singular
In an era when credit unions have largely abandoned their founding missions — broadening charters and chasing membership growth — Tennessee Military Federal Credit Union has done the opposite.
Alcoa Tenn Federal Credit Union, founded in 1936 by Alcoa plant workers, now serves more than 22,000 members across three counties. ORNL Federal Credit Union, started in 1948 by Oak Ridge National Laboratory employees, has grown to more than 160,000 members across a 16-county footprint. Both long ago converted to community charters open to the general public.
TMFCU has not.
“TVA used to have one. ORNL used to have one,” Rimmer said. “They’re mostly all open now to the general public. We’ve maintained our charter saying, nope, this is the only people that can be members here.”
Membership remains limited to Tennessee National Guard members, veterans, their families, and VFW and American Legion post members statewide. The credit union counts roughly 1,500 members today. A recent internal survey found that 40 percent are serving or have served with the 134th Air Refueling Wing at McGhee-Tyson; another 40 percent are family members of someone who has; the remaining 20 percent are veterans from other branches.
CEO Beth Kamer, who runs the institution with that lean staff of six, said the size is a feature, not a flaw.
“We just know them,” she said. “We’re just not huge. We know them. We treat them like family.”
That familiarity has produced a culture of lending built on trust rather than bureaucracy. Former employee Gina Massey, who has been connected to the credit union since childhood — her father retired from the Air National Guard and opened an account that she and her family were sub-members under — recalled how former manager Vera Harvey would lend money from her own pocket on a Friday evening if someone came up short.
“You didn’t have to pay her back in such and such time. You did when you could afford it,” Massey said.
The Mission in Practice
The credit union’s mission was on full display during the federal government shutdown of October through November 2025. TMFCU issued $123,566 in zero-interest payday delay loans — up to $6,000 per member — across 47 total loans. Twenty-six of those borrowers had joined the credit union just the month before.
“Some other credit unions or banks were trying to help, but they had a bunch of stipulations,” Kamer said.
It was not the first time. Howard recalled a previous government shutdown, decades earlier, when military paychecks were frozen. “They just said, anybody that belongs here, we’re honoring their paycheck this month. They didn’t even require paperwork.”
Howard grew emotional recalling that he had two children in school and a wife at home at the time. The loan meant everything to his family during those weeks of uncertainty.
Rimmer put the philosophy plainly: “My house is backed by Gina’s house. Gina’s house is backed by his house. We’re all in this together.”
The Next 70 Years
On Jan. 1, 2025, the credit union completed a rebranding, retiring the ETMA name in favor of Tennessee Military Federal Credit Union — a change designed to signal its statewide ambitions.
The 134th Air Refueling Wing, the credit union’s most direct membership source, is itself on the cusp of a transformation. In November 2025, the U.S. Air Force named McGhee Tyson ANGB as the preferred location to host the KC-46A Pegasus, a next-generation aerial refueling aircraft that would replace the wing’s aging KC-135 Stratotankers. A newly constructed 10,000-foot runway and a $32.4 million maintenance hangar have already been completed in preparation.
For TMFCU, a growing and modernizing base means a growing membership pool. Rimmer is set to begin visiting National Guard bases across Tennessee — Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis — to introduce the credit union to guardsmen who may not know it exists.
“There is no way on this planet that this credit union would have been here for 70 years if it wasn’t for our members and those who came before us,” Rimmer said. “Our members just continue to have that faith and trust in us to be good stewards of their money. We just want to celebrate our members for continuing to be members.”
For Howard, who first walked into that little credit union on base as a young man in 1966 and never really left, the institution’s persistence across seven decades comes down to just that.
“The main reason why folks stay with the credit union?” he said. “They trust the people that’s here.”
