Hugh's view: looking back, Hugh McColl recalls two turning points in a career that created the biggest bank in America.

• Author: McColl, Hugh
• Position: FEATURE

Hugh McColl Jr., 77, built the nation's largest bank, but int959, nearing his discharge from the Marines, all he wanted was a job at the family cotton brokerage and gin in Bennettsville, S.C. His father told him the business was doing fine without him; he'd better head to Charlotte, where a position at American Commercial Bank awaited, to make his fortune. The former CEO of Bank of America Corp. and founder of Falfurrias Capital Partners, a Charlotte-based private-equity firm, recalls two watershed moments that helped him find it. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

When I came to Charlotte, there were maybe 200,000 in the area. You could fire a shotgun down the street at 5 p.m. and not hit another human being. It was a dead city full of churches and no bars. You couldn't buy a whiskey by the drink.

I had great aspirations. I probably had a good touch of fear of failure that drove me. I wanted to please my parents. My father, particularly I was a young man, 26, 27 years old. You've got the economic pressures of being married, two children, not making much money. I wasn't sure I was going to stay with the bank. I'd been offered a job at a smaller bank making more money. All it was was money. It certainly wouldn't have been a better opportunity. Nothing could have been as good an opportunity as I had. But when you're young, you don't know that.

I was traveling as a salesman in the correspondent-banking division with another young man way superior to me and clearly, by everybody's view including my own, the rising star in the company. We'd been on the road for about three days and were in Greenwood, S.C. We were drinking at the bar--vodka and orange juice--and had quite a bit to drink. This person said to me, "McColl, I can work with you, but I'm not going to work for you."

I was at the lowest level of officer at the company, and here was a guy three layers above me already sensing, more than I did, that I was going to the top. I remember corning stone-cold sober when he said that. I heard it, and all of its implications hit me. I think I knew then that I was going to win. I've never lacked for confidence. But the fact that you believe in yourself doesn't mean everybody else does.

American Commercial became North Carolina National Bank Corp. in 1960, and McColl became CEO in 1983. At the time, NCNB had about $12 billion in assets. Five years later, after buying the failed First Republic Bank Corp. of Texas, it had around $60...