Service America history

By September 1978 the company merged with City Investing Co.'s GDV Inc. division, an acquisition of $188.7 million.

In 1985 Allegheny Beverage Corp. purchased Servomation for $225 million and merged it with its Macke division.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Carr Newcomer, a group of frustrated Service America senior managers teamed up with the New York investment banking firm of Morgan Lewis Githens and Ahn, Inc. (MLGH&A), and Merrill Lynch Interfunding to purchase Service America from Allegheny Beverage in 1987.

In 1988 Hank decided to retire and have his son Kenneth Fredericks take over ownership of Hansco.

Newcomer led Service America until mid-1989, when Steven Leipsner became the company's CEO and president.

In October 1990 the company began a two-year struggle to restructure nearly $400 million in debt.

A decade before that, Service America emerged from the merger of two dominant South Florida warranty companies, Amira Services and Encore Service Systems, following their acquisition in 1993 by Chemed Corp., which also owned the plumbing service Roto-Rooter.

In his 2000 campaign, Senator McCain—initially a skeptic of national service, now a strong supporter—won a wide following among young people by urging them to aspire to things “beyond your own self-interest.” Many surveys suggest that young Americans are deeply engaged in civic activity.

In his 2001 State of the Union message, he called on Americans to give two years of service to the nation over their lifetimes and announced the creation of the USA Freedom Corps.

One by Harvard’s Kennedy Institute of Politics in October 2002 found that 61 percent of its national sample of undergraduates reported performing some form of community service in the past year.