On Wednesday July 21, Middleburg Bank celebrated its 80th anniversary at all five branches. Staff greeted customers entering the banks with cake, ice cream and soda. Fliers proclaimed "80 years old . . . and we're still foxy!"

The institution's Board of Directors presided over well attended the celebrations at the branch in Middleburg. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joseph L. Boling spoke, and a cake decorated with the Middleburg bank logo in red icing was cut by Board Member Millicent West.

The celebrations were especially meaningful to Board Member Ed Wright, who has worked for Middleburg Bank for 50 of its 80 years.

Wright began working for the bank as a bookkeeper and loan officer in 1954, just thirty years after the bank first opened at the intersection of Middleburg's Washington and Madison streets, directly across from the Red Fox Inn, in the building now home to Devonshire. "When you worked in a small bank in those days, you did everything" Wright noted.

In 1958 Middleburg Bank moved from the corner Washington and Madison to its current location at 111 West Washington Street, taking with it the distinctive vault door still in use there. The move also allowed Middleburg to became the first bank in Loudoun County to offer drive-through banking.

Middleburg bank continued to serve Loudoun from 111 West Washington Street, its structure essentially unchanged, for the next thirty years, Boling remarked. It was a period marked by sweeping change in banking doomed many other community financial institutions. Indeed, Boling noted, by the early nineties a combination of economic conditions and sweeping changes in banking laws had killed most of the true "community" banks in the area.

With its community orientation essentially unchanged, however, Middleburg Bank not only survived but prevailed.

Indeed, in 1994 the bank began to address the problem of disappearing local banking service by opening its first branch office in Purcellville. Since then the bank has continued to open new branches throughout Loudoun. The opening of a second Leesburg branch in 2002 brought the total to five full service branches.

"You have to be bigger in order to be competitive," Wright explained. "You have to grow to keep up with the technology. You have to grow to in order to continue to serve your community and your customers well," explained Wright.

The bank also grew by acquiring interests in Southern Trust mortgage based in Norfolk, Gilkerson Patterson Investment Advisors Inc. in Alexandria, and Tredregar Trust Company in Richmond.

That much growth in a relatively short time might make it appear that the bank is moving away from its community roots, Chairman Boling noted, but nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, only by growing can the bank really truly community focused, meeting the needs of a community and local economy that is itself growing and rapidly evolving. "There's a strong drive towards growth in order to remain independent," said Boling. " We work very hard to stay as close to our roots as we can, follow our client base, and put ourselves fully in position to serve our clients and our community."

Good corporate citizenship has always been a tradition at Middleburg Bank, Boling noted. A giant thermometer with a fox shaped icon marking the "temperature" of projected donations to a variety of causes is a common sight on the bank's lawn. The Middleburg Volunteer Rescue Squad and the Loudoun Education Foundation, to cite only two examples, have been frequent beneficiaries.

The bank also provides significant help to area schools, not only by lending financial support to a variety of school activities but through significant volunteer work by bank employees, especially in teaching courses on finance and banking principles to Loudoun students.

Middleburg Bank's employees are also encouraged to bring worthy causes to the attention of the Board. "We give to the March of Dimes and to the Walk for the Cure, because our employees were actively involved," said Boling.

In a community in which people love their animals, Middleburg bank's signature "pet policy" is both unique and very popular. Middleburg's customers are welcome to bring their pets along when they do their banking and the bank has served dog biscuits at the drive-up teller window for years.

The policy received national attention in the late nineties, when CNN filmed one of the bank's canine customers was on his hind legs at the teller window, waiting patiently for his biscuit.