Staying power.

• Author: Johnson, Maria
• Position: PROFILE

Collectively, these retired businessmen are worth a small fortune. Time spent in each others company at "work" on Greensboro's Banking Street is, well, priceless.

The wooden sign by the front door says Blue Gem. And it's true, a real-estate holding company called Blue Gem Inc. is headquartered here, in an office that takes up half of a gambrel-roofed duplex on Banking Street in Greensboro. Alan Cone is president of Blue Gem. Sheron Watts is secretary and treasurer. Alan's son, Billy, is the vice 4$ president. But Billy lives in Wilmington, so here in Greensboro, the company is just Alan and Sheron. That's Blue Gem, like the sign says. But the office is also a hive--albeit a low-key hive--of some of Greensboro's most successful retired businessmen. Down the hallway from Cone, five of them rent cubbyhole offices, which he leases for just enough to cover the taxes on the place.

If you tallied up the net worth of the whole lot, you could call them the Billionaire Boys Club, and you might be off by one zero. Maybe. None of them has to be here, yet every one of them is, nearly every day they're in town. Berry Reid, 90, is a former stockbroker at J.C. Bradford & Co., now UBS AG. Alan Cone, 89, worked for his family business, Cone Mills Corp., before buying his own denim company. Bob Rapp, 89, started and sold three home-building companies. Clyde Collins, 86, was chief financial officer and executive vice president of Southern Life Insurance Co. until it was sold in 1986. Charlie Reid, who turns 81 this month, is the former CEO of United Guaranty Corp. who came to Greensboro as an executive for First Union Corp. And Bob Taylor, the baby at 78, is a former banker and owner of several KOA campgrounds. Total mileage? Rapp grabs his calculator, which is never far away. His fingers fly over the large buttons. That's five hundred thirteen years of experience, he says.

They play the stock market. They talk current events. And smack. And sports. All of the guys went to school in North Carolina. Taylor and Rapp are Davidson men. Cone graduated from Carolina. Berry Reid started at N.C. State and finished at Carolina. Collins went to King's College, and Charlie Reid went to Wake Forest.

Lunch is a pretty big deal, except for Collins, a light eater who usually heats up something in the kitchenette at end of the hall, and for Taylor, who typically goes home to catch a bite. The rest dine out a fair bit--sometimes with each other, sometimes with other pals. Back...