Aug. 30--Joe Evans, who led the group of investors that bought the failing Macon-based Security Bank last month, said a lot of what he knows about business principles he learned from his father on the family's farm in Smarr.

"You have to be willing to get your hands dirty to create value, and one of the great ways to create value is to repair something that's broken," Evans said during an interview at his office on Forsyth Road in Macon. "If your business involves expansion by acquisition, I think you have to soberly conclude how you are going to add value to that transaction."

Evans is chairman and CEO of State Bank & Trust Co., which now owns Security Bank Corp.'s six bank subsidiaries shut down by the government July 24. Three of the six Security Bank offices are located in Bibb, Houston and Jones counties.

Evans has a reputation in the banking industry for buying troubled banks that no one else wanted and turning them around.

Early in his life, Evans thought he might be a biologist, but by the time he graduated from high school, "my sense was I would be in business in some way," he said.

After leaving his family's dairy farm, Evans spent his summers working at a number of jobs including doing inventory at a manufacturing plant, flipping hamburgers at Hardee's, installing heat-reflective window trim and pumping gas at a Shell station.

Evans, 60, now owns the family farm in Monroe County.

His first job out of college was with what is now SunTrust Bank, then after working a short time for a consulting firm, he went to Monroe County Bank in 1974, where he was vice president/secretary.

In 1980, Evans went into business with Billy Anderson at the Bank Corporation of Georgia, the holding bank for Bank of Fort Valley.

"Our goal was to grow a banking organization and we did," Evans said.

The company bought a number of small and/or problem banks in Georgia, and by 1997 it owned banks in Macon, Savannah, Newnan and in a number of rural locations.

"We built the banking organization very much the way a cattle farmer builds a herd of cows," Evans said. "Hopefully, you buy skinny cows in a cheap market, you put a little weight on them and sell them in a better market. Then you go back and buy a couple more."

Anderson said he has known Evans since he was a little boy on the farm.

"He impressed me early on in a number of ways," said Anderson, chairman of Macon-based Southern Trust Insurance Co. "He had enough self-confidence not to let his ego get in the way. ... He's extremely creative and very, very intelligent yet he remains very down to Earth. ... He combines a business brilliance with a committed Christian life."

Anderson said when he bought the Bank of Fort Valley, it was "a $10 million bank and by the time Joe finished fooling with it, it was close to $2 billion. ... We've had a great run."

In 1997, Bank Corporation was merged with Century South Bank and the headquarters moved from Fort Valley to Atlanta.