Bowles Finds Success in Business, Service

Oversized glasses, a quickly thinning hairline and an open -- if not somewhat awkward -- smile might not seem to be the characteristics of a man who's made a fortune among polished businessmen from Charlotte to New York City.

And it certainly doesn't seem the description of a man who can move with ease among the elected aristocracy of Capitol Hill.

But in both cases, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Erskine Bowles breaks the mold. In fact, success in business and government seem Erskine Bowles' destiny -- perhaps brought on not only by his will but by a family name, inherited talent or even circumstance.

Erskine Bowles was born in 1945 in Greensboro to civic-minded parents -- Jessamine and Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles.

Skipper Bowles was a businessman and an ardent Democrat who served in the N.C. General Assembly and made a failed bid for governor.

As fate would have it, Erskine Bowles would follow in father's footsteps in both career and public service, though his early years seemed to indicate he would do neither. "There is not a soul in the class of 1967 that thought I'd be up here at the front of the class instead of way in the back," he said in August during a speech at his alma mater, UNC.

Erskine Bowles -- always up for a good time during his college years -- often neglected his studies and left even those who knew his influential family wondering if he would be a success, he says.

But he earned a business degree from UNC in 1967 and began to explore his more studious side. After briefly serving in the Coast Guard reserves, Erskine Bowles enrolled in Columbia Business School, receiving a master's in business administration in 1969.

From there, fate had its way, and his role as heir to the Skipper Bowles legacy was set. Erskine Bowles took a job at the New York office of Morgan Stanley & Co. and in 1975 founded the firm that would become Charlotte-based Bowles Hollowell Conner -- one of the nation's leading investment banking firms.

In 1993, President Clinton asked Erskine Bowles to head the Small Business Administration, and in accepting, he began to fulfill the civic part of his destiny.

And Erskine Bowles certainly has given more hours to public service than the average citizen, whether it's by presiding over the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation or heading North Carolina's Rural Prosperity Task Force.

No matter the nature of his endeavors, Erskine Bowles' career and his civic-minded pursuits have gone hand in hand.

His banking expertise has enabled him to handle deftly not only his clients' fortunes but also has helped him provide apt guidance to charity organizations, nonprofit groups and government agencies.

But it is actually political duties -- particularly time spent balancing the federal budget -- that have driven home the need for fiscal planning, Erskine Bowles says.

"We've got to get back to fiscal responsibility," he said at a Chapel Hill campaign stop in September. "Don't let anybody tell you that you can't be fiscally responsible."

Though Erskine Bowles says his public service has taught him responsibility and selflessness, he abandoned it to a large extent after the spotlight on the Clinton administration cast him in a somewhat negative light.

But fate would again intervene, drawing him back to public life. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 nagged at him, Erskine Bowles says, even after the initial shock and horror had faded.

"I kept hearing my dad's admonition that all of us have to add to the community woodpile," he told a group of UNC students in September. "I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life in public service. I really thought I could go back to Washington ... and make a difference."

So Erskine Bowles finds himself seeking high office -- a position from which he says he hopes to have a positive impact on the lives of North Carolinians. One can only imagine that Skipper Bowles would be proud.

 

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.