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Phil
Leventis has worked with and helped people all his life.
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Phil Leventis began working at age 12 in the Zesto Restaurant
on Forest Drive in Columbia.
"My
first job was when I was 12 years old, pulling ice cream cones
at Zesto's for 40 cents an hour," Phil remembers.
Later he
worked part-time and during the summers in his father's business,
Dixie Beverage company, also in Columbia.
As a college
student in Charlottesville, Virginia, he worked for Horizon Aviation,
first as a line service person fueling aircraft. Later he became
a flight instructor in light aircraft. He also worked one summer
in Reno, Nevada, teaching flying to Civil Air Patrol cadets.
After graduating from college, Leventis joined the Air Force and
served on active duty from 1969 through January 1974.
In the
family business
When Leventis
left the Air Force, he moved his family to Sumter to work in the
family business, Dixie Beverage Company, which was started in
1959 by his father. Leventis became general manager, a position
he held until the death of his father in 1988. From that time
until December 2000, he headed the company. He merged it with
another company, Central Distributing, in January 2001 to form
Dixie-Central Corp. Today, he is president of Dixie-Central Distributing
Company, which sells beverages in Sumter, Lee and Clarendon counties.
His former competitor, Robert Wilder, is now his business partner
and serves as the company's chairman. Leventis says the partnership
keeps the business headquartered in Sumter. Dixie-Central has
more than 20 employees.
As he ran the beverage company, Leventis continued his military
service as a part-time guardsman in the South Carolina Air National
Guard. He served for more than 25 years and retired as a brigadier
general in March 1999.
Other business interests
Leventis
also has other business interests. He has been a general partner
in LPT, a partnership originally founded by his grandfather and
other family members in 1918. The three general partners who manage
the company are all family members. The company has real estate
holdings in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia.
For four
years during the early 1990s, Leventis and a business partner
owned and operated Dixie Aeronautical Services. This company provided
maintenance services to general aviation aircraft with FAA certified
mechanics. It was located at the Sumter Municipal Airport.
Leventis also is a founding board member and current chairman
of the board of Sumter National Bank which began operations in
1996. The bank is a subsidiary of Community Bankshares of Orangeburg.
He is a member of the Board of CBI which has banks in Orangeburg,
Sumter and Florence as well as a mortgage company with offices
in Sumter, Columbia and Anderson.
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