At 64, the age when many people are cruising to retirement, Stafford Mansfield White Jr., a career banker, opened a community bank. Less than three years later, he opened the fifth branch office of Metro-County Bank, and two years after that, in 2002, he sold Metro-County for $17.1 million to Warrenton-based Southern Financial Bank. Southern Financial has since been acquired by Provident Bank, and Mr. White remained on the advisory board, his family said.

GLENN CRIDER, nutcracker designer A Mechanicsville man is about to make a serious stamp on history. “I have a feeling my life is about to change,“ Glenn Crider, 53, said this week. Today, Crider will be at Madison Square Garden in New York City where the U.S. Postal Service is unveiling its contemporary holiday stamps for 2008. Five stamps will be introduced—four of them based on Crider’s designs. And they’re all nutcrackers. The fifth has a religious theme.