B Y - R I C H A R D - H Y A T T

Fortune magazine ranks Synovus CEO Jim Blanchard and AFLAC CEO Dan Amos as two of the best employers in America—which is something people in Columbus, Ga., have known for years

ay Coleman couldn't feel the heat of the flames, just the terror. August 18, a Friday. Her husband was suddenly on the phone. Don't drive home, he said. The house is burning. Stay at work. The girls are coming after you. Fay was paralyzed. This was the place on the river they had dreamed about, the one they worked so hard to fix up. Now it's ashes, she thought, and there's nothing to do but cry.

Before her daughters could get to the AFLAC tower in Columbus to pick her up, Fay Coleman's telephone rang again. It was Dan Amos. She never thought to ask how the CEO in the big office upstairs knew her house was ablaze, but he did. "I'm so sorry, Fay," said Amos (BBA '73). "I know you don't know what you're going to do right now, but I want you to consider my place up in Harris County yours."

By Sunday, things had come into clearer focus. The Colemans could build another house. But meanwhile, where would they live? As they talked, Fay remembered that Amos said to call him. Sunday afternoon, she did. "Fay, it's open," said Amos. "When do you want to meet me?" A big executive, she thought, and he's meeting me like he has nothing else to do. At his place in the country. Amos gave Fay and husband Red a tour . . . where the dishes and linens were . . . about the security system . . . oh, and the fully stocked pond. It was the kind of tour a realtor would give to a family that was thinking of moving in.

For two months, the Colemans called Dan Amos' hunting retreat their home. Problems were solved on the deck, and the pain of the fire began to dissipate as the Colemans soaked up the tranquility that emanated from a little pond on the property. Talking about that incident a year later isn't easy for Fay Coleman, a registered nurse who works in AFLAC's health services department. Talking about her boss is.

"Dan Amos is my Good Samaritan," she says. "He is absolutely my hero."

Long after she and her husband moved out of Amos' hunting lodge, it dawned on Fay Coleman that she had never repaid him for his kindness. She called Cynthia, his secretary.

"I've never offered to pay him rent," said Coleman.

"Pleeeeeeeze," said Cynthia, "don't you dare ask him that."

Running AFLAC was a job Amos never expected. But within a decade, his district was the company's top producer. By 1983 he was president. In 1990, when his uncle died, he became CEO.

he board of Columbus Bank & Trust bowed their collective heads. A member of their extended family had been seriously injured in a boating accident and before there was business, there was prayer.

"Everybody at the company was praying for Luther," says Beth Stanton, a long-time employee in the bank's trust department. Her husband Luther didn't work for CB&T or Synovus or Total System Services. But it was obvious that Beth would need a great deal of help and understanding during Luther's recuperation. Fortunately, the Synovus family was there.

And when you're talking about Synovus, you're talking about Jimmy Blanchard (BBA '63, LLB '65). He and his wife, the former Sis Sterne, (AB '64), showed up at the emergency room after Luther's accident. Later, they brought muffins to the hospital. When Luther faced surgery after surgery, they were there, too. As CEO of Synovus Financial Corp., Blanchard was Stanton's ultimate boss. He was also Beth and Luther's Sunday school teacher at St. Mark's United Methodist Church. Mending wasn't easy for Luther and he needed Beth by his side as much as possible. To help make that happen, the company gave her accumulated sick days for all the years she had worked there and didn't charge her for any she had taken. No matter how many hours she had to be away from work, her benefits continued.

Five months later, Beth asked if she could return to the company, which had filled her old job, but, at Blanchard's direction, kept her on the payroll. "They gave me a job when there wasn't even a place for me to sit," she recalls. Over and over, they were there for her. Big things like a job. Little things like fresh bread. "I was back at work and Luther called," Beth says. "He wanted to know if I had asked Sis to bring us bread. I hadn't. She told him she was baking bread and just thought of us."

These are things Beth Stanton can't forget. "Jim is always there," she says. "He's just unique."

hen you drove into Columbus, Ga., in a bygone era, you knew you were in a mill town. Up and down the Chattahoochee, in massive brick structures where their mama and daddy toiled before them, shift workers turned cotton into cloth. On the outskirts of town, Fort Benning turned men into soldiers. But Columbus' main industry —and reason for being—was cotton. Those days have changed. Modern-day Columbus is run, to a great extent, by Dan Amos and Jimmy Blanchard, two benevolent kingpins who operate their international insurance and banking empires in a town of only 185,000 people. It is also the town where Amos and Blanchard have chosen to live—when the world could be their oyster. That's why stories such as Fay Coleman's and Beth Stanton's are part of the Amos-Blanchard lore. They don't make the annual report, and cynics will tell you they don't mean a thing when it comes to the bottom line. But Dan Amos and Jimmy Blanchard don't work on Wall Street. They work in Columbus, Ga., a town they've helped change.

AFLAC stands tall, by design a story taller than the building where city government operates. It is perched on Wynnton Road, where cotton barons' columned mansions once stood. At that unlikely address, the world's leading carrier of supplemental insurance is headquartered.

Along the riverfront, where the mills used to be, sits the sprawling campus of Total System Services Inc., the payment services branch of the Synovus family. Credit card bills from around the world—5.6 billion transactions in 2000—pass through their computers.

Amos and Blanchard control these respective companies. They work in a bottom-line world where business leaders are slaves to the stock market and to investors who demand healthy returns. They work in a world where governors, senators, and, yes, even presidents take their calls. They have corporate jets waiting to whisk them across the country and around the world.

But they live in Columbus.

On the day he turned 39, Amos took over from his Uncle John. Blanchard, at 28, reluctantly succeeded his late father as president of CB&T. Under their leadership, both companies have flourished. Both are rated among the best places to work in America by Fortune. To folks around town, however, they're just Danny and Jimmy.

What transformed CB&T from a small-town bank to a $12.5 billion corporation known as Synovus was a 1976 banking bill—championed by Blanchard at the capital—which made it possible for state-chartered banks to own other banks.

hen his father retired as chairman in May, Dan Amos sat quietly. Others talked about Paul Amos, sharing all the old stories. Dan just listened. This day belonged to his father. He would have other days. It seemed the thing to do. Just as it did for AFLAC's annual report to include a father-son photograph. Other leaders of Fortune 500 companies would demand a formal portrait of themselves. Dan Amos wanted family.

"This is still a family company in Columbus, Georgia," says Amos. "In New York City, that wouldn't play well."

But it plays well in Columbus, as it has since 1955 when his Uncle John started the company in an old frame house. Dan was just three years old when his flamboyant uncle started peddling stock certificates door to door around Columbus. But he was also born to sell, hawking snow cones as a kid in the Florida panhandle.

"You're always selling something," he says, "even if you're just selling yourself to another person."

His family moved to Columbus when he was 15. He wanted to play football at Columbus High but an injury ended that. To be close to the sport he loved, he became a team manager. That's the kind of guy he is. Amos' father Paul and his Uncle Bill came to Georgia to join his Uncle John in the launching of the American Family Life Assurance Company. Mr. John, as he's called, sold those first shares of stock to anyone who would listen. The ones who purchased them are millionaires; the ones who didn't have never forgiven themselves. The fledgling company's specialty was cancer insurance, a pioneer product that quickly put the company on the map.

There never was any doubt that Paul Amos' only child would one day be part of the business. Running it was another matter. "I figured with Uncle John and Uncle Bill each having two kids," says Amos, "that it would never be me."

At UGA, he majored in risk management. He was active in campus politics, serving as president of the senior class in 1972, and he met his future wife, Shannon Landing (BSEd '73), at UGA. It was the company that brought Amos back to Columbus. "The family name gave me a chance," he says. "It didn't guarantee success."

Within a decade, Amos' district was the company's top producer. By 1983, he was president. But to most observers, CEO John Amos was still American Family. Wearing white suits that made him look like a Southern planter, he expected his lieutenants to be wide awake when he called them with brainstorms in the wee hours. Ego inspired John Amos to build the headquarters building one story taller than the city's government center. Later, he even built a gaudy chalet on top of the company's parking garage.

In the late 1980s, the man who popularized cancer insurance was diagnosed with the disease. When John Amos died in 1990, his pallbear-ers ranged from Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) to Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York).

This was the culture into which Dan Amos moved. By any barometer, the company now known as AFLAC is a huge success, both here and in Japan—where the AFLAC brand is better known than Merrill Lynch or Citicorp.

"The life span of a company birthed like AFLAC is usually short," says former UGA president Charles Knapp, a member of the board of directors since 1990. "Dan has turned it into a Fortune 500 company and one of the successful U.S. companies operating in Japan. It is one of the most remarkable stories in U.S. business."

This spring, AFLAC moved into a $25 million campus in Columbus. It is an employee-friendly facility, even providing private phone rooms where workers can make a personal call. The decision to locate in the city of its founding is interesting since less than one-tenth of one percent of AFLAC's business comes from Muscogee County. The decision was purely personal.

"If you put your family first, you'll like this city," says Amos. "We've only lost one executive that was sought by a head hunter. Once we get them, we keep them. My own roots are Southern. I like Georgia football and Southern cooking. I like to be outside and bird hunt. You enjoy all those things here."

AFLAC doesn't have the Braves or the Georgia Dome to entertain clients. But they do have golf courses and the outdoors, things their Japanese customers value more than a skybox. But the image of AFLAC is much larger than the town it calls home. Amos shows up on cable TV business shows and recently made a cameo appearance on "Imus in the Morning," chatting with the I-Man about AFLAC's involvement with his ranch for children with cancer.

Then there's The Duck.

When Imus notes the time, his listeners hear the voice of the duck: "AFLAC! AFLAC!" Dennis Miller mimicked it on "Monday Night Football." A company salesman was buried with a duck in his coffin. Even Ted Kennedy took a shot at the quacker in a phone call to Amos.

Using the voice of comic Gilbert Gottfried, the AFLAC Duck has a life all its own. Spots using the duck are watched, not tuned out. The company took a $45 million flyer on the original spots and will spend that much this year on four new commercials using the pushy spokesfowl.

Did Amos embrace the duck the first time it quacked? Insiders say no, that he had to be persuaded. Only after it was duly tested did he give the go-ahead. He now has a life-sized duck in his office and a collection of ties adorned with tiny quackers.

As part of employee appreciation week this year, AFLAC workers gathered at Columbus' convention & trade center. Suddenly, the room exploded with a re-recorded version of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Amos had hired a band to cover the Baha Men song with brand new lyrics. Now it was "Who Let the Ducks Out?" and at that part of the song when dogs bark, ducks quacked. On cue, hundreds of employees squawked "AFLAC! AFLAC!"

The mood was much more subdued a week later when AFLAC shareholders gathered at the Columbus Museum for the company's annual meeting. It was Paul Amos' last day as an active executive, and the day of Dan Amos' tenure as chairman and CEO.

They didn't give Mr. Paul a gold watch or a plaque to hang on the wall. The gift they gave will benefit members of the AFLAC family long after he's gone. To his surprise, the company endowed a $1 million scholarship at Columbus State University in his name. It will help employees, their children, and grandchildren go to college. Again, it was the thing to do, a family thing.

"A hired gun would never have that," says Dan Amos. "I want the Amos family dream to continue."

Similarities run deep between Dan Amos and Jim Blanchard. Both came to Columbus because of their fathers' jobs. Both met their wives at UGA. Both became CEO of their family business. And their companies are customers of one another.

or 30 years, Jimmy Blanchard picked up the tab for breakfast, a practice that proved so popular with his employees that it has morphed into a gigantic company lunch that makes everyone feel included, even though it lacks the feel-good, first-name-basis charm of its predecessor. Blanchard started these Tuesday get-togethers in 1970 when he became president of Columbus Bank & Trust Company, a local institution that is 112 years old. Back then, the breakfast clubbers convened in the ballroom of the old Martinique Motel. CB&T was a hometown bank and Blanchard was a hometown boy. Now it is a $12.5 billion company that goes by many names: Synovus Financial Corp., Total System Services Inc., and a number of other subsidiaries. Their 11,600 team members represent 65 communities, mostly in the Southeast.

"Now we have 500 people at lunch . . . and half of them I've never laid eyes on," says Blanchard. "My agenda is way beyond my hometown, and I miss that."

For three decades, Blanchard has been a footnote to every major event in Columbus. He was there when the city and county governments consolidated, when the mixed-drinks bill passed, when the convention center was built and I-185 was opened, giving the city a much-needed interstate connection. He headed a group that passed a bond issue to air condition local schools. He was there when a special option sales tax paved the way for the city to become an Olympic venue for women's fast pitch softball, when the Riverwalk opened along the Chattahoochee, and when the Columbus Civic Center was built after 30 years of debate. Blanchard played a role in all of that but refuses to take credit either personally or corporately.

"Columbus' growth reflects the aspirations of the city's leadership, what they've talked about for 35 years," he says. "We didn't cause it, but we contributed. What used to be good enough for us isn't good enough now."

Blanchard never planned it this way.

After graduating from Columbus High, he went to UGA, looking ahead to the practice of law. He was a member of the Bulldog golf team and also found time to be president of the Interfraternity Council while being inducted into the Gridiron Society, Who's Who, and Blue Key. He graduated in a program that offered three years of undergraduate work and three years of law school. After a tour of duty in the Army, he returned to Columbus where his father was president of CB&T. When his father died, Blanchard was drafted as his successor. It wasn't a job he sought, nor one he thought he wanted. He was a lawyer, not a banker.

But two men—D. Abbott Turner and his son Bill—became Blanchard's mentors, showing him where his duty was.

As the owner of Georgia Crown, another Columbus success story, Don Leebern has watched the rise of Blanchard and his company. He remembers the popularity Blanchard's father enjoyed and how difficult it was for his son to move up. He's also watched the rise of Amos and AFLAC.

"Jimmy and Dan couldn't be like everybody else—they had to prove themselves," says Leebern. "You feel like you're being watched. You don't take extra benefits or vacations because your name is over the door. You're always being judged."

For several years, Blanchard was a small-town banker getting his ticket punched like most small-town bankers do. He was even president of the high school PTA. Two things changed that. One happened in 1959 when a bank employee created a computer program that could process credit card statements at lightning speed. The other happened in 1976 with the passage of a law that allowed state-chartered banks to own other banks—a bill Blanchard championed at the state capital. CB&T was the first bank in Georgia to expand outside their county and it soon spread around the region. From those momentous steps, Total System was born. It has become the profit center of the corporation now called Synovus. At its helm is Blanchard, who can pitch or preach, coach or command, make you cry or make you cheer.

"Good football teams still have to block and tackle," he says, "and "Synovus has to live those fundamental values or we won't succeed. And if people aren't prospering under you, you won't be successful. If you're shy and withdrawn and don't communicate those values, you shouldn't be here."

At Synovus, those values are expressed in what Blanchard calls a "culture of the heart," a company-wide attitude that resulted in Synovus being named the No. 1 place to work in America in 1998 by Fortune. "Culture of the heart" is something Blanchard learned from Bill Turner, the retired CEO of the W.C. Bradley Co. and chairman of Synovus Financial Corp.

"The way to fame and fortune isn't through cunning, manipulation, or an out-for-myself attitude," says Blanchard. "It's good values, integrity, dependability, energy and gentleness."

Blanchard has a natural ability to make people feel comfortable. Seated in his office with his arms folded behind his head and his jacket on a hanger in the corner, he's all yours. And it's not just an impression; it's reality.

"Jimmy's a natural leader, and he would be a leader in any setting," notes Griffin Bell, former U.S. Attorney General and an emeritus board member for TSYS.

Selected as the state's most respected CEO by Georgia Trend in 1997, Blanchard has been a kitchen cabinet adviser to governors Zell Miller and Roy Barnes, and he counts among his company's shareholders the state speaker of the house, Tom Murphy.

If you want to get him on the phone, take a cue from Bill Todd, the former head of the Georgia Research Alliance, which Blanchard helped create. "Just tell his secretary you're calling about bird hunting," says Todd. "He'll call you right back." Getting in the woods is a release and a passion for Blanchard. When an impromptu pep rally was held to celebrate Synovus topping the Fortune list as the best place to work in America, Blanchard arrived directly from a bird-hunting trek to the woods of Alabama. Still had on his camo gear.

Though the company does business in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, Blanchard says Synovus is still a creature of the region where it was born. He signed a five-year contract in 1999 but looks ahead to the day he'll step aside, wishing his successor good will. "It's like your chillun," he says. "You hope those who follow you do well."

imilarities between Dan Amos and Jimmy Blanchard run deep. Neither was born in Columbus; both came there because of their fathers' jobs. Both graduated from Columbus High. Both went to UGA, were active on campus, and met their bride there. Both became CEO of the family business. And, in true small-town tradition, they're almost related: Amos' second cousin married one of Blanchard's sons.

They dominate the city, but not from a pedestal. Amos eats twice a week at Country's Barbecue; the waitress doesn't even have to ask what he wants. He'll also order a Scrambled Dog from Dinglewood Pharmacy across the street from AFLAC. They send it in a banana split dish and after he collects several he sends them back—washed.

Blanchard often gathers for lunch with old friends Gardiner Garrard and Richard Y. "Bo" Bradley. Not at the posh River Club where they make men wear a jacket, but at Rosemary's, a meat-and-3 cafe where you pick out your own pork chop at the buffet line and where splurging is a bowl of homemade banana pudding. Blanchard buys his suits off the rack at Chancellor's, a Columbus men's store that has clothed local executives for generations.

Amos also enjoys small town life, working out at the YMCA three times a week. The only ostentatious thing in his life is his green Jaguar—unless you count the time he booked the Temptations to sing at his daughter's birthday party.

Each dabbles in politics, not because they want to but because they have to. Blanchard was an early supporter of Barnes for governor and Amos held a party at his home for the late Sen. Paul Coverdell, an event where then-Gov. George W. Bush was the speaker. But don't attach party labels. Amos also was invited to dinner at the White House by Bill and Hillary. Both are Methodists, Blanchard at St. Mark's in the suburbs and Amos at St. Luke's downtown. Both have been active in public education, from grassroots to the state capital. Both are generous with their money and their corporate funds.

"They're always willing to do their part," says U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (AB '57, MA '58). "They've knocked on my door, but I assure you, I've knocked on theirs."

UGA president Michael F. Adams says Amos and Blanchard have helped change the face of the state. "They're supporters of globalization and they understand the value of international business," he says. "They see beyond the immediacy of an issue."

Though corporate neighbors, Amos and Blanchard seldom get to spend much time with one another. But they did join forces to raise $12.5 million to build the Columbus Museum [see cover], a facility that blends fine art with community history. It was the largest public fundraising effort in the city's history, only recently surpassed by the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, to which Amos and Blanchard also contributed. Their companies are custo- mers of one another. They compete in just one area: for qualified employees. Between them is mutual respect.

Blanchard on Amos: "Dan Amos is a brilliant, energetic, motivating leader. When he took over, I offered him help. The experience and wisdom he shares with me today is much more valuable."

Amos on Blanchard: "Jim Blanchard is one of the best people I've ever met. I admire him. He's just a nice guy. I think we have the greatest people in the world at AFLAC and Jim says the same about Synovus. Our cultures are alike. We both want to be people-oriented."

They will tell you how important the years they spent in Athens were to their development—as business leaders and human beings. They talk about growing up there. Each has given freely in return. Both served on the UGA Foundation Board, Amos as chairman. Their interest in UGA runs deep.

"As interested as they are in athletics, their first love is the academic progress of this university," says Adams. "They're not just interested in the here and now. They help insure our future."

But they're still just regular folks, eating their barbecue and drinking their iced tea—sweet, of course. They're leaders and they're neighbors. They've taken care of their hometown and they've taken care of their family businesses—reinventing them along the way. But they haven't reinvented themselves. They push their own buggy at Publix and stand in a long line to get fried chicken at Minnie's. They command the situation, not demand it.

Jeffrey Rosenweig, an Emory University professor of finance and international business, uses both Amos and Blanchard as examples in his book on leadership. Amos even teaches his class once a year.

"Without insulting anyone in Atlanta because I have to live here," says Rosenweig, "I don't think there is a city in Georgia that has two business leaders any more respected than Dan Amos and Jimmy Blanchard."

Zell Miller puts them in historic perspective. "You can't even estimate their value to Columbus," he says. "They are the kind of civic leaders that come along once in a lifetime. What Robert Woodruff did for Atlanta, they do for Columbus."

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