Storrs, built forerunner of Bank of America

Before North Carolina National Bank became today's Bank of America, Tom Storrs guided the Charlotte-based bank through treacherous economic times in the 1970s, laid the groundwork for national expansion and nurtured future company leaders.

Storrs died Friday at 93.

While successors Hugh McColl Jr. and Ken Lewis would win more national acclaim and notoriety, Storrs often won praise from his former pupils for his stewardship of a regional bank that would one day become the nation's largest.

"He's one of the great CEOs this city has ever known, this country has ever known," Lewis said of Storrs at a 2009 Charlotte Chamber event. "I appreciate it more now after the last 2-1/2 years what he did for us."

Said McColl: "Other than my father, I think Tom Storrs was the most important man in my life. He taught me a whole lot of things; most important was how to gather information and make decisions on it and figure out what it meant and how to act on it."

In his role as NCNB chief executive, Storrs helped build a Southern institution into a national force and transform a once little-known city into the nation's second-biggest banking center. After his retirement, the bank would grow even bigger under McColl and Lewis, bringing wealth and power to the city but also financial pain and economic uncertainty in the wake of the nation's financial crisis.

Background with Federal Reserve

Thomas Irwin Storrs was raised in Richmond, Va., where his father's cement-equipment company fared well until business virtually dried up in the Depression, according to "The Story of NationsBank" by Howard Covington and Marion Ellis.

While still in high school, Storrs took a job as a runner at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He later worked his way through the University of Virginia and served in the Navy during World War II.

He returned to the Richmond Fed's research department, with time off to serve in the Korean War and to study economics at Harvard.

Storrs came to Charlotte to run the city's Fed branch, but left in 1960 for a job with NCNB in Greensboro. He had caught the eye of Addison Reese, the NCNB CEO. Storrs became executive vice president for administration in 1966 and eventually moved back to Charlotte. As Reese's second-in-command, Storrs built a reputation as a razor-sharp, logical thinker.

As CEO, he continued to promote the aggressive, youth-oriented culture pioneered under Reese, but with an emphasis on examining the data beforehand. "It wasn't a disaster to be wrong," Storrs said in a later interview. "It was a disaster to make a decision that wasn't properly based."

McColl later credited Storrs with bringing intellectual discipline to the company. "We were perceived by the world as being gunfighters, risk-takers," he said. "The truth was we were a very fact-driven company."

Storrs became CEO on Jan. 1, 1974. He was immediately greeted by brutal economic times that scarred bankers for decades. NCNB was in particular danger because it funded itself largely with borrowed money, instead of more stable retail deposits. Over the summer, NCNB came dangerously close to being insolvent, but Storrs and his team scrambled to land necessary funding.

Key driver for interstate banking

By the late '70s, Storrs began pushing for interstate banking in the N.C. General Assembly. Inside NCNB, Storrs created an in-house Interstate Banking Group, young executives assigned to examine ways for the bank to expand its business outside the state.

And by 1981, NCNB had discovered a loophole in Florida state law that allowed the bank to make a small acquisition in the Sunshine State, the first major victory in the campaign for interstate banking.

"We realized that if we didn't leave North Carolina, we would never amount to anything, that we would not be important," McColl said, giving credit to Storrs for the push to expand across state lines.

Charlotte businessman C.D. "Dick" Spangler Jr. said Storrs had strong faith in the federal reserve system and understood the banking system as viewed by regulators and bankers themselves.

Storrs retired as CEO in 1983, turning the bank over to McColl. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld regional banking compacts that allowed banks in certain parts of the country to cross borders.

NCNB and Charlotte rival First Union launched major acquisition sprees. NCNB would become NationsBank and then Bank of America as McColl turned the Charlotte bank into a coast-to-coast institution.

Moynihan said the bank "can serve customers from Charlotte to China and everywhere in between because of Tom's vision and banking acumen. Tom was an architect of Bank of America and one of the giants on whose shoulders his successors all have stood."