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In 1932 - as the stock market was hitting its lowest point - George M. Ferris connvinced several fellow stockbrokers to join him in starting a new firm. When their faith faltered nine months later, Ferris bought them out for double the value of their shares.
Ferris' firm not only survived the Depression, it became the largest full-service brokerage headquartered in Washington. Ferris & Company merged with a Baltimore firm last year to become Ferris, Baker Watts.
Ferris was born in 1893 on a farm in Newton, Connecticut. He went to Trinity College in Hartford, where he studied economics - and played baseball well enough to earn offers from the pros. He accepted an offer from Wall Street instead. After serving as a captain in the Army Air Corps in World War I, he started selling mortgage bonds for S. W. Strauss & Company. In 1920, Strauss asked him to open a Washington office.
After Ferris opened his own firm in 1932, it took Ferris two years to make it profitable - but he never doubted he would. Ferris & Company became a member of the New York Stock Exchange in 1946. Today Ferris, Baker Watts has 165 brokers in 18 offices with $20 million in equity capital- compared with the $6,000 George Ferris started with in 1932.
Ferris turned the company over to his son, George Ferris, Jr., in 1957, but he still arrives at work most mornings at 8:30.
He once took a six-week vacation - but that was 30 years ago. Now he allows himself only two weeks off a year. "I like to keep busy," he says.
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