What a difference.

• Author: Finotti, John
• Position: NationsBank of Florida N.A. President Adelaide Sink - Company Profile

A study in contrasts, NationsBank Florida's president thrives in a cookie-cutter corporate culture by not fitting the mold.

In the early 19th century, while visiting a remote village in Siam, the Southeast Asian nation now known as Thailand, a couple of U.S. merchant mariners marveled at the sight of two 11-year-old brothers named Chang and Eng. The otherwise healthy-looking twins were joined at the hip, a deformity that required each to place an arm over the other's shoulder as they walked. Struck by the rarity of the sight and, no doubt, envisioning its commercial possibilities, the sailors persuaded the twins' parents to let them take the boys with them to Europe and the United States. The twins eventually toured with P.T. Barnum's circus for several years. Still in their teens, they then decided to strike out on their own and traveled from one small town to another, collecting nickels and dimes from thousands of gawkers eager for a glimpse of the famous Siamese twins.

By the time the brothers were in their late 20s, they quit the sideshow circuit, tired of curious onlookers. They had saved enough to let them try another line of work. Chang and Eng, who had taken the surname of Bunker when they emigrated, settled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, where they opened a general store and announced to the community that they were available for marriage. One local woman offered to marry the pair but was politely rebuffed; each brother wanted his own wife. Chang and Eng eventually fell in love with two daughters of a local Baptist minister. The girls' parents balked at the marriage proposals, but the brothers eventually prevailed: Chang married Adelaide Yates, while Eng married her sister, Sarah.

At first, the Bunker clan lived under one roof, but that arrangement became problematic after the two wives began squabbling. At about the same time, the brothers' general store faltered, and Chang and Eng bought a tobacco farm near Mount Airy. They built two houses for their families, and for 30 years they alternated between their wives' houses, spending three nights at one, then three nights at the other. Chang and Eng died in 1870 at age 63, having fathered 22 children.

"That's the shortened version of the story of the Siamese twins," sums up Adelaide "Alex" Sink, president of NationsBank Florida. "It's an incredible story about survival, and even thriving, with a disability." For Sink, 51, it's also family history: She's the great-granddaughter of Chang and Adelaide Bunker. Sink, whose mother was also named Adelaide, grew up the elder of two children on the Bunker tobacco farm, in the house Chang built in 1840. By the time of her childhood, her family history had faded into local lore, and another Mount Airy celebrity soon took the spotlight: Andy Griffith used his hometown as the...