When CVC started hemorrhaging money, Kimsey realized he faced more than a financial loss. He was in the process of taking a bank holding company public, and the Securities and Exchange Commission wanted to know if Kimsey had been an officer of a corporation that went bankrupt. "I became really motivated to find some way to keep CVC from going under," Kimsey says.

What he and his colleagues did was to shelve CVC and assign its assets and employees to a new company. Quantum Computer Services opened for business in 1985 with Jim Kimsey at the helm. Kimsey planned to find a CEO to run Quantum. It took him ten years to hand over the reins. The company – soon renamed America Online, experienced the typical ups and downs of a start-up.

The way Kimsey explains it, AOL's weak points proved to be its strengths: "We had to figure out how to get other people to carry our water. We didn't have any resources." Kimsey gave every employee stock in the company so they'd have an interest in making it work. He kept honing in on services that everyday people could use. It worked. By the time Jim Kimsey became chair emeritus a few years back, AOL had become a powerhouse with 250,000 members and $40 million in annual revenues.

Jim Kimsey is not focusing his energies on philanthropy. His approach is unique. To support both the arts and kids, he not only donated $10 million to the Kennedy Center but also endowed a chair for a tuba player in the National Symphony Orchestra and arranged for District fifth-graders to attend any event at the Kennedy center free of charge.

"I'm just a local guy who hit the lottery," Kimsey says. Now he's letting his community share the wealth.