Duncan McAdoo has deep roots in Winnsboro, so it stands to reason that after college and a career in professional baseball, he decided to come home to work and raise his family.

McAdoo’s grandparents are Nelda Larue McAdoo Bradley and the late Don McAdoo. His father, Mike, was raised here and brought wife, Lori, home to open a dental practice in 1984.

Duncan graduated from Winnsboro High School in 1996, the first of his three siblings, Dillon, Lauren and Lindsey, to complete 12 years at WISD.

McAdoo and his wife, Beverly Cain McAdoo, were high school sweethearts.

They married in 2001 and have three girls – Kendal, 14, and twins Kennedie and Kaitlyn, 10.

Beverly’s following in her mother’s footsteps, teaching FCCLA at Winnsboro. Melinda Cain retired last year after more than 30 years with WISD.

An outstanding high school athlete, Duncan pitched for the University of Houston from 1997 through 2000 and was drafted by the San Diego Padres. He pitched for them until 2004.

After Kendal was born, Beverly moved home.

The McAdoo family, Duncan, Beverly, Kendal, Kennedie and Kaitlyn, spend a lot of time supporting WISD sports. (Courtesy Photo)

“She didn’t want us to raise Kendal in the city,” Duncan said during a recent interview in his office at Prosperity Bank.

 

When he was released from the Padres, McAdoo was at a crossroads.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he confessed. “I had some opportunities to keep playing, but I knew I had played way beyond my means.”

He earned a degree in sports administration from U of H and could have stayed on with the Padre organization, but decided to come back to East Texas in 2004.

“I was fortunate to have an opportunity with Mineola Community Bank,” he explained. “I started out as branch manager and was promoted to vice president later on.”

Mineola Community Bank experienced a time of growth during the 12 years McAdoo was there, moving from the building that now houses Peoples Telephone to a new site across from city hall.

“It was an exciting time,” he said.

In January of  this year, McAdoo was presented with another great opportunity when Prosperity Bank came calling.

“I didn’t expect it,” he noted. “They are the second largest bank in Texas, with 225 locations. I was a little intimated to come talk to them. I was in a much smaller bank.”

As it worked out, McAdoo was hired as vice president and was quickly promoted to banking center president in August.

“I was hired to develop the market,” he stated. “There hadn’t been a lender [in the bank] here since Franklin Bank.”

McAdoo said he was delighted that many of his former customers followed him.

“It was important,” he said. “It made me feel I had done them a good job and they felt that loyalty. It didn’t feel like I was starting over.”

Prosperity Bank has more than 20 offices in the East Texas region.

“I’ve got two really good guys as my supervisors,” he noted. “I think I’ve shown them the type of business I can bring. We’re going to have a very good year. The sky’s the limit.”

Prosperity Bank has grown through acquisitions. It purchased Franklin Bank from the FDIC in 2008. It recently purchased a small bank in South Texas.

“They are constantly looking for new acquisitions,” he said. “Prosperity Bank is the hunter, not the hunted.”

McAdoo’s supervisors quickly realized he needed an assistant. Sheri Thomas, who was with new accounts, volunteered.

“New accounts and lending responsibilities go hand-in-hand,” McAdoo explained. “She knows a lot about commercial accounts and how they are set up. I couldn’t  have gone out and hand-picked anybody better.”

Joining Thomas and McAdoo are: Marilyn Likes, lobby manager and vice president; Joan Box, drive through bank teller; Elizabeth Woodworth, new accounts and part-time teller Mary McNeil.

McAdoo says he plans to continue to use the skills he learned in sports – structure, discipline and time management  –  keep his head down, stay on the path and go full steam ahead.

Prosperity Bank’s focus for their Winnsboro center is to “grow loans inside the bank.”

That’s a perfect fit for McAdoo.

“I’ve got a 12-page rate sheet,” he said with a laugh. “We can do commercial to agriculture to home loans – anything under the boot. I mean anything. The product list is limitless. Our lending authority to one person is so much greater under the capacity of the bank.”

While he has the lending power of a large bank behind him, McAdoo knows the importance of being a community bank.

“I never got to participate in banking when you could go in somewhere and shake somebody’s hand and make a deal,” he explained. “As much as banking has evolved, that’s the part we miss.”

If he believes in somebody or something, however, he goes to bat for them.

“It’s like silver bullets,” he said. “You want to keep some available to you, but there are going to be times where you say, ‘By gosh, trust me on this.’”

Being raised in Winnsboro, McAdoo also knows the importance of community involvement.

The bank supports many local organizations, including the Autumn Trails Association, Rotary (Likes is a long-time member) and Northeast Texas Child Advocacy Center. They recently lent their support to the annual hay show, a first for them.

On a personal level, McAdoo is involved in little league and serves as a referee for high school basketball games and youth football games. He also has been a member of the city’s park and recreation board.

“I was very fortunate that my dad was so well known,” he said. “I’m trying to live up to that name with the legacy he set.”

He says he’s attempting to follow in his father’s footsteps and to do his mama proud.

So far, so good.

 

 

 

I heard an intriguing piece with author Anna Solomon on NPR and decided to get her book, “Leaving Lucy Pear.”

Solomon, a former NPR reporter, was really on her game during the interview, weaving a complex story about the intersection of two women’s lives near the turn of the century.

During the 1917 late summer pear harvest, a young, unwed mother leaves her infant daughter in the orchard near her uncle’s house because she knows the people who steal the fruit every year have a lot of children and she would rather have her daughter – called Lucy Pear – raised by a family than in an orphanage.

Fast forward 10 years.

Lucy Pear’s foster mother comes to work for Lucy’s birth mother and her elderly uncle in their big house on the coast of Massachusetts.

If you like Virginia Woolf’s stories, you might enjoy “Leaving Lucy Pear.”

I probably would have liked the story more if I were more familiar with the Gloucester area, the fishing industry and rum running.

Solomon is a talented writer, but, the prose lagged and there wasn’t much dialogue to drive the plot, leaving me indifferent as to the story’s outcome, although I would probably read a sequel, should there be one,  to find out what became of the young, resilient Lucy Pear.

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It’s time to start thinking about Christmas gifts. If you have a “Hamilton” fan on your list, you’re in luck.

Grand Central Publishing has released one of the most beautiful coffee table books on shelves this year.

“Hamilton: The Revolution” offers a behind-the-scenes peek at one of Broadway’s most successful shows, offering up more than 200 stories written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the driving force behind the game-changing musical and all the words to the show’s songs.

“Hamilton” won 11 Tonys, including Best Musical and won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The show just opened in Chicago, with San Francisco and London runs planned next year.

During Miranda’s stint as Alexander Hamilton, the “founding father without a father,” tickets for the show were scooped up months in advance, going for thousands in the re-sale market on the Internet.

This glorious book contains lyrics, stunning photographs, including full color, two-page spreads, and more than 50 interviews with people involved with the production.

Plus, it smells like the books that once sat on the shelves at the Carnegie Library, which is reason enough to pick up a copy.

Like the ground-breaking show, “Hamilton: The Revolution” will change the way you look at librettos (text used in extended musical work) – and for only $27 at amazon.com.

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Winnsboro native Melissa Whitley Lenhardt has written a follow-up to “Stillwater,” her first Jack McBride mystery.

“The Fisher King,” set for release Nov. 1, takes place six weeks after former FBI agent McBride accepts the job as chief of police in the small, East Texas town of Stillwater.

A scandal cost McBride his position with the government, his wife, Julie, has left and he’s doing his best to raise teenage son, Ethan, alone.

It’s not going well. On his first day at work, his gun is stolen.

When he meets Ellie Martin, Stillwater native and book store owner, sparks fly, but McBride does his best to resist, as a romantic entanglement is the last thing he needs.

Complicating matters, Jack’s wild-boy brother, Eddie, shows up on his motorcycle, itching for trouble.

In “Stillwater,” McBride solves a double homicide and a decades-old murder and uncovers corruption and drug trafficking issues.

His estranged wife, gone almost a year, pops back into Jack and Ethan’s life.

In “The Fisher King,” an abandoned house on the outskirts of town is burned to the ground, with two bodies inside.

As Jack navigates his way through small town politics, he also discovers that life with Julie isn’t what he wants. His heart lies with Ellie – and hers with him.

Add two shocking murders and drug smuggling, and you have all the ingredients for a late-night page turner.

Lenhardt is really coming into her own. With “The Fisher King,” she’s developed characters I want to know better.

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Looking forward to seeing Melissa at a book signing Gilbreath Memorial Library Friday, Nov. 18, from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.

 

 

Reading Stanley Nelson’s book, “Devils Walking,” detailing brutal murders meted out by an offshoot of the Klu Klux Klan, is not for the faint of heart.  It’s hard to conceive the kind of evil necessary to commit these crimes, but Nelson, editor of The Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, LA, spent almost ten years digging into the past to uncover the details. Continue reading “Author Stanley Nelson at Winnsboro Center for the Arts Oct. 8 – Pulitzer Prize finalist honors those who died at the hand of evil” →