One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning

Hey, I’m Richie the owner, and if you’re wondering “how DID One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning in Myrtle Beach become the greatest heating and air conditioning company on planet Earth? Is it sheer EXCELLENCE? Is it pure HEART?” Fair questions! But the answer is really found on a dusty page of Americana, three generations ago on a Depression Era dirt farm. That’s where my grandfather Samuel Herbert “Sammy” Drew grew up. Sammy was always a ‘fix anything’ type of kid. He had an American toughness born from tougher times. Local farmers and folks couldn’t buy new machinery. But there was nothing Sammy couldn’t fix. It’s what he loved. Sammy left to join the army and fought during WWII. After the war, he worked on oil platforms in Alaska and then the Gulf of Mexico. Through it all, he always kept helping everyone around him, fixing things that were broken. While living in Louisiana working the oil rigs, he started a small appliance repair shop. Folks would drop off their refrigerators, toaster ovens, and washing machines. My grandfather would fix them, often free of charge. “Always do the right thing. Because it’s the right thing to do.” – Sammy STARTING A “BUSINESS?” When you focus on doing good work, trying to make customers’ lives better, at the end of the day you WIN. An offshore oil platform accident killed several workers and ended Sammy’s oil career. So he moved to Myrtle Beach and began repairing and maintaining air conditioning and heating systems at the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base. Then he worked as a maintenance and repair man for the famous Chapin Company of Myrtle Beach. But in his free time, he would still fix people’s window units, refrigerators and such, though he rarely charged money for it. He just did what he loved, fixing things for people. In 1978, my father Richard Drew was a Myrtle Beach police officer making $98 a week, trying to raise a family. He helped his father Sammy with the repair work in a small shop behind Sammy’s house. My dad kept saying they should open a REAL service company, to serve all the residents of the Myrtle Beach area. He was ambitious and young, and Sammy was a man that could fix anything. But Sammy didn’t care much about profits and success. It was often said that Sammy Drew would give you the shirt off of his back if you needed it. I was 5 years old in 1978 and remember being in my grandfather Sammy’s workshop, with the smell of oil and the sound of the air compressor kicking on and off. My mother would laugh at the things she would find in my pockets after I’d spent the afternoon “helping” grandpa: wire nuts, screws, wiring, and bolts… He and I had a very special bond, and I know the way I treat customers today comes from the way both my father and I learned to treat people, from my grandfather Sammy. Sammy died of a heart attack in 1978, in his sleep after attending my graduation from Vacation Bible School. It was the last time I heard him laugh or saw him smile. I can vividly remember holding on tight as he would carry me on his back, galloping like a horse while I was laughing. It was a devastating blow to the Drew family. DREAMS OF MY FATHER My father had almost convinced Sammy to start that service company, but the dream was cut short. So he decided to prove to his dad that he could do it. To make his father proud. I believe this was his driving motivation from the beginning. So he started the heating and air conditioning company and nearly starved to death that first winter. But he and my mother decided to knuckle down, not give up, and try advertising with fliers on people’s cars at the mall. Well, they began to get a few calls and the summer of ’79 was a hot one, so they survived. A few years later my father teamed up with a friend named Maxwell who also had a small service company and they combined their