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Bill Calomiris went to work as a baker's apprentice at 16. After his father died, young Calomiris had quit Eastern High School to help support the family. He hated the bakery job-especially the 8-PM-to-4-AM working hours. After sweating it out for two years, he decided to go into the rooming house business.
The young entrepreneur had no money. But he signed a lease and proceeded to rent out rooms, using his increasing income to cover his costs and rent more rooming houses.
Calomiris bought his first house for $7,500 in 1940. He made a $500 down payment. The balance was to be paid in $20 monthly installments. He was 19 years old, and he was on his way.
He kept buying buildings, fixing them up, renting them out, and using the profits to buy more. Soon, he brought his brothers into the business.
"I didn't know anything," he admits. "I learned as I went along and did what I had to do." And he had a wonderful time doing it. "You've got to have fun," he says.
He's been doing that ever since. Except for three years in the Marine Corps in the Pacific during World War II, when his younger brothers ran the business, Bill Calomiris has spent his time growing his real-estate empire - one building at a time. Over the years he expanded into construction and remodeling, with both residential and commercial properties.
Along the way, Calomiris got into banking. During the 1980s and early '90s, he and his banking partner, Carroll Amos, built Washington Federal Savings Bank into a regional mortgage-banking powerhouse. It was acquired in 1996 by Baltimore's First Maryland Bancorps for $80 million.
Calomiris then did what came naturally: He bought another bank. Greater Atlantic Savings Bank in Rockville is on the move - it has just grown to four branches and five more are planned. For Bill Calomiris, building his business also meant building his community. When he chaired the United Givers Fund (now United Way) in 1962, the campaign reached its goal for the first time in its history.
Calomiris was the president of The Greater Washington Board of Trade in 1968, the year the area was torn apart by the riots. He led the board to start summer programs for inner-city kids and to build low and moderate-income housing in Prince George's County. He also helped the DC Youth Leaders Corps.
An admirer described Calomiris during that period as a "dynamic, restless man who repeatedly has urged captains of industry and businesses not to wait for programs to come along, but to make them happen."
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