PARKERSBURG — The Wood County Commission honored local businessman Richard Adams Thursday by awarding him the Spirit of Wood County Award.

Adams appeared before the commission and talked about his career in the area with United Bank as well as his involvement in the community.

Adams is currently the Executive Chairman of the Board at United Bank.

“My dad was a banker, my mother was a banker, my brother was a banker and there was no way in the world I was going to be a banker,” Adams said.

Initially, Adams thought he might go to law school. He got a job at the country club being a caddy master and ended up playing on the Parkersburg High School golf team. His father urged him to go to work for a bank.

“I thought it would be a green visor job, but I came to realize it was a people job,” he said.

Out of college, he got a job with the Wachovia Bank and Trust in Winston-Salem, N.C. He returned to Parkersburg after a stint in the military to join the Parkersburg National Bank (predecessor to United Bank) that had a single office and $100 million in assets.

Under Adams, the bank completed 33 acquisitions and currently has assets around $29.5 billion, 3,000 employees and around 250 banking and mortgage offices in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Washington, D.C.

He has worked his way up.

“I have done it all,” he said of jobs he had at the bank. “I had a lot of great experiences.”

Adams talked about when he was 27 and how the bank did not have a succession plan in place and how he didn’t think he would have the support to do it being so young, but a board member had him write out his plans for the bank. A board of directors meeting was held and Adams got the position of Chief Operations Officer and took it over a year later.

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo highlighted how Adams took the bank from one generation to the next by doing proper hiring, management training and hired “top flight people.”

“I thought that walking into your bank today it is so amazingly different,” Colombo said. “The atmosphere is so great and the people are so friendly and that is because of some of the things you instilled in there.”

Adams said he has always learned from the people he looked up to and around him.

“If you are going to have a great company, you have to have core values,” he said. “I came up with four main core values: integrity, teamwork, hard work and caring.

“Those have been in place for almost 50 years. I preach those every day.”

United has become the 35th largest banking company in the country.

“We love Parkersburg,” Adams said, highlighting the work they have done with the Parkersburg Boys and Girls Clubs and the Discovery Center.

“We give a lot of money and our people are involved in the community,” Adams said. “The good Lord had a plan for my life.”

Colombo said the Lord gave Adams the wisdom and understanding to use that plan to better himself every day.

“When you make yourself better, you make your people better and you make our area better,” he said. “I think that is a wonderful contribution you have given us.”

Adams credited the wonderful people who work for United for making a lot of things happen.

Commission President Blair Couch said there were business leaders in the community that took an active role in community leadership positions and the number of those roles appeared to get smaller and smaller.

“You have invested heavily with United in Parkersburg,” he said.

“There are many ways to serve in the community,” Adams responded.

Adams presented a book to the commission detailing the history of United and showed a picture they had at the bank of David Couch, Blair’s father and a former Wood County Commissioner who died in the early 2000s. Adams described the elder Couch, who had served on the bank’s board, as “one of my dearest friends.”

Colombo didn’t think Adams got enough credit.

“We would like to honor you,” Colombo said. “You are a contributor to everyone’s daily life in this community, whether they believe it or not.

“That is life itself.”