Withdrawal.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: United Carolina Bank's merger with Branch Banking and Trust

When UCB merges with BB&T, a big business will no longer call the tiny town of Whiteville home.

Finally, the din of a hundred musicians tuning their instruments melted away. With a wave of a wand, a bald, bearded man transformed the racket into a rousing medley of holiday classics. Sweat dampened his smooth head as he melded the trill of trumpets, thump of drums and whine of violins into Jingle Bells and Joy to the World. As the evening wore on, the players regaled their audience with the likes of Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Irving Berlin.

When it was over, the audience walked out of Whiteville High School's auditorium into an unseasonably warm December night - witnesses to what might have been the North Carolina Symphony's last Christmas concert in their little town.

The symphony started performing the annual concert 10 years ago thanks to United Carolina Bank, the town's biggest corporate citizen and the state's eighth-largest bank. Until 1996, when Wilsons Supermarkets co-sponsored the event, UCB was sole sponsor, ponying up about $8,500 a year. "It's community relations, something nice for the community we make a living in," says John McLaughlin, UCB senior vice president of corporate communications.

But if all goes as planned, United Carolina Bank will leave Whiteville this year, ending more than 70 years as the center of its economic and civic life. In April, shareholders are expected to approve a merger with Winston-Salem-based Southern National Corp., parent of Branch Banking & Trust, the fourth-largest bank in North Carolina. UCB branches, the ones that survive a likely round of post-merger cost-cutting, will bear BB&T logos before the leaves fall.

Most high-ranking employees, many of whom form the backbone of the community, will have to move, find a job with another company or retire early. "Common sense will tell you that you're not going to need two executive management teams," says Rhone Sasser, UCB's chairman and CEO. "My job will go away, and many other jobs will go away."

Though deeply disappointing to Whiteville, the buyout is not a shock. Nationwide, the number of banks has dropped by a third over the past 12 years to less than 9,700, while total assets grew by three-fourths to $4.4 trillion. North Carolina went from 81 banks in 1991 to 56. Whiteville had lost two community banks to out-of-town buyers before, leaving UCB the last hometown bank.

From Whiteville, a town of 5,615, the bank built a business with $4 billion in assets and 155 branches in 89 communities in North and South Carolina. It's fourth in deposits in Fayetteville, Goldsboro and nearby Wilmington.

UCB's glass-and-metal headquarters has dominated Whiteville's downtown by default since it opened six years ago. Only four stories, it dwarfs its neighbors, including the three-story UCB Insurance Center across a courtyard. Its 11-sided design would look more at home in a Raleigh or Charlotte suburban office park than in Whiteville, the county seat and economic hub of Columbus County, a sparsely populated patchwork of farmland, swamps and forests along the state line between Interstate 95 and the ocean.

It is a fertile breeding ground of athletic talent. Oakland Raiders All-Pro defensive tackle Chester McGlockton grew up in Whiteville. Major Leaguers Otis Nixon and Tommy Greene hail from Columbus County. Competition in the county's little leagues is, at times, literally cutthroat. In 1992, one coach slit another coach's...