Not bad for a kid with little ambition and no direction who joined the Air Force at age 18, hoping the military would make a man of him. Bannister trained as an electrician and was sent to Japan. After finishing his tour, he started classes at the University of Arizona and worked the afternoon shift at an aircraft plant.

When the plant closed, Bannister joined California Eastern Airways, the forerunner of DynCorp, as an electrician. Three months later, he was made a supervisor. It was the end of his formal studies and the beginning of his corporate education.

Bannister recalls that he had "itchy feet" and applied for assignment to Europe. But when a mentor cautioned that there were no promotions across the ocean, Bannister stayed put. The advice payed off. He moved up the corporate ladder, and in 1964, when the new company president decided to expand into energy services, Bannister came to the Reston headquarters to run the rest of the company. Bannister embarked on a mission to focus and build the company. DynCorp's revenues rose from $50 million to $405 million in ten years.

Bannister became president in 1984. He steered the company through a hostile-takeover attempt when he easily could have sold out and enjoyed a golden parachute. Instead he converted the publicly traded DynCorp into one of the nation's largest employee-owned high-tech corporations.

"The company had 14,000 employees then," he explains. "Many, like me, had spent their professional lives building this company. It was more than a job - it was their company, their life."

Bannister has been active in the community, chairing the Northern Virginia Technology Council and serving on the boards of the Easter Seal Society, Potomac Knowledgeway, the George Mason University Foundation, and the Board of Trade.

Bannister retired as president this year and gave up the day-to-day running of the company to become chairman of the board. But he remains deeply involved with the company. "I'm still an employee of DynCorp," he says.