Many independent real-estate brokers retreated and sold out to the highest bidder. Not Wes Foster. When his partner, Henry Long, wanted to sell to Merrill Lynch, Foster bought him out. Then Foster proceeded to beat back his national competitors.

Foster countered the national bigness and clout with local people power – staying close to his agents and giving them the tools and resources they needed. Even now, at age 70 and after kicking himself upstairs to be chairman, Foster is still in his Fairfax office most mornings, working the phones and exhorting the troops.

Long & Foster itself now has national clout – it is the fourth-largest real-estate services firm in the country and the largest in the Mid-Atlantic region. Sales for 2003 totaled $43 billion – an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before.

Not bad for a Georgia boy who came to Washington selling aluminum building panels. The product was not a big seller in an area favoring Colonial-style houses. Foster had planned to live in Atlanta, but he met his wife-to-be, who as a New Englander. Washington was as far south as she wanted to go, so the couple settled here, and he starting selling houses for builders.

Henry Long came to a house Foster was showing, and the two discovered common interests. They opened Long & Foster in 1968. "We flipped a coin to see whose name would go first," Foster says.

Today the Long & Foster companies do more than sell housed – they provide mortgages, title insurance, and home and personal insurance and have partners who offer resettlement services.

Wes Foster has always been committed to the communities he serves. The company sets aside a day each year for a community-service project. Foster has created a college-scholarship program that divides $150,000 among 150 students each year.

Foster's family and his company don't expect him to retire anytime soon. "I love the business," he says. And he's happy to share the secret of his success, which he admits he borrowed from fellow Atlantan Ted Turner: "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."