Thornwell Dunlap III learned about leadership when he was in the ninth grade and defied his father’s order to get a haircut.
One Friday back in the 1960s, Rufus Thornwell Dunlap Jr. came home for lunch from Countybank, where he was president, and told his son that his shoulder-length bowl of hair wasn’t going to cut it.
Later, at 6:08 that evening when the senior Dunlap returned home, they were standing in the kitchen while his mother, Martha, was making dinner. Young Thornwell told his father he had gone to the barbershop — when he clearly hadn’t.
“I just think he realized that he would have to think of a better way to get through to me,” Dunlap said. “After that, he learned to just see how he was saying things, like, ‘Have you thought about this or have you thought about that?’”
Today, that same leadership style runs through the corporate culture of the Greenwood-born bank that marked its 90th anniversary in June. It currently has locations in Greenwood, Greenville, Simpsonville, Greer and Anderson.
In 1933, during the Great Depression, local banker John B. Sloan found himself out of a job. He decided to start a financial institution.
Sloan soon raised startup capital totaling $25,000, including a $5,000 investment he had arranged — Dunlap’s word — from Dunlap’s maternal grandfather, Bonner Harvley. Other investment dollars came from those who saw the need to provide loans to Greenwood families.
Who starts a bank, especially when so many are closing, with the equivalent of around $580,000 in today’s dollars?
“That’s inconceivable,” said Paul Pickhardt, who will retire this year as senior vice president and Small Business Administration lending manager after more than six years at the bank.
The bank’s history
Then, reflecting on the bank’s history and the way Dunlap has operated the company since taking over as its CEO in 1995, Pickhardt added: “It really is a great story. I gotta tell you, he has a real defined culture that he espouses, and not only that, he believes in it and he walks the walk.”
Today, Countybank’s assets exceed $700 million, said Dunlap, the bank’s president and CEO and the chairman of its holding company, TCB Corp.
Meanwhile, more than half of the company’s revenues flow from non-interest income from Countybank’s broad portfolio under TCB Corp., which began in 1982. Starting in the 1990s, the company added trust, investments and mortgage services, with Countybanc Insurance established in 1998.
All told, the company employs around 190 people. People, after all, have always driven the bank’s purpose.
“He’s got a whole culture that’s really important to this bank,” Pickhardt said of Dunlap. “It is critical to him and he really believes in it, and everybody that works for him has that same feeling.”
Family, of course, plays a crucial role. In March, Countybank’s board of directors named Rufus Thornwell “Wells” Dunlap V its senior vice president and the bank’s senior operations manager.
Dunlap III is now in his 43rd year at the bank where his father, Rufus Thornwell Dunlap Jr. served as CEO from 1970 to 1994.
Moving forward, the bank’s leader said he sees the strength of his management team leading that legacy into its next century.
“The impact I’ve had is to take that culture and move it with the times that I’ve lived in,” he said.
Core values
Thornwell Dunlap III, Countybank’s president and CEO, listed the company’s core values in his own words:
- Share and receive openly — “I believe the No. 1 hurdle in every organization is communications and how well you do it, and you never can get it right. You always have to keep trying and trying and trying, and we always do that.”
- Stand as one — “We have a lot of lines of business. but we’re one united organization.”
- Put people first — “That’s kind of your golden rule.”
- Discover and do — “To me, that’s ‘value of action.’ It’s my responsibility to take ownership and get it done. As an organization, it’s our responsibility to figure out what you need to get your job done and get that to you the best we can.”
Through the years
Early 1930s: John B. Sloan Jr. leads a small group of investors to raise $25,000 to open a community bank.
June 5, 1933: The County Bank opens with Sloan as president; G. Bonner Harvley, head cashier; and Jeannie Engels, secretary.
1948: The bank remodels, removing grilled teller cages, replacing high oak desks and installing air conditioning.
1957: Sloan dies. Harvley is named president.
1959: The bank opens its first branch, which features Greenwood’s first drive-thru teller window, on South Main Street.
1967: Second branch opens on Reynolds Avenue in Greenwood.
1970: Harvley resigns. R. Thornwell Dunlap Jr., former branch manager at the South Main Street location, becomes president.
1971: The County Bank Foundation forms.
1990s: The bank expands into other financial divisions.
1995: R. Thornwell Dunlap III is appointed president. The bank begins to offer insurance, mortgage, investments and trust services.
1998: Countybanc Insurance is established. Countybank now includes Countybanc Insurance Services Inc.; Countybanc Investment Services Inc.; Countybank Mortgage; and Countybank Trust Services and its affiliate, Greenwood Capital.
2002: The bank unifies the company and its subsidiaries under a new name: Countybank.
2006 to present: The bank opens branches in Greenville, Anderson, Greer and Simpsonville, and adds offices in Greenwood and Greenville.
Since 2010: The bank has closed on more than $3.2 billion in mortgage loans.
2023: Countybank Foundation contributes more than $150,000 to such charities as Anderson Interfaith Ministries; Greenwood Genetic Center, Rebuild Upstate, United Way of Greenville and Ten at the Top. To date, the foundation has donated more than $3.5 million to local charities.
June 2023: Countybank marks 90th anniversary.
Sources: Countybank video and R. Thornwell Dunlap III, Countybank’s president and CEO
