C. William Pollard began his career as a lawyer and then as a college administrator and professor before entering the corporate world and serving for 12 years as CEO of cleaning and management services giant ServiceMaster Industries.
Under Pollard’s leadership, ServiceMaster, then based in Downers Grove, grew significantly, becoming a national powerhouse in outsourced services.
“He brought to the table a brilliant mind and an ability to grasp things more quickly probably than anyone I knew around the table,” said former ServiceMaster board member Gunther H. “Bud” Knoedler, 95, a former chair of Wheaton College’s board of trustees.
“It made him a very valuable person because you knew you were always going to get the straight answer from Bill.”
Pollard, 86, died of natural causes on June 6 at his home at the Covenant Living Windsor Park retirement community in Carol Stream, said his son, Charles “Chip” Pollard. Previously a longtime Wheaton resident, Pollard also had a home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Born Charles William Pollard in Chicago, Pollard grew up in Wheaton and graduated from Wheaton Academy in West Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in 1960 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 1963.
From 1963 until 1967, Pollard practiced business and tax law for the now-defunct Wilson & McIlvaine law firm in Chicago. He then teamed up with a law school classmate to start a small law firm in Wheaton, Vescelus, Perry & Pollard, which they soon merged with a larger one. Clients included his alma mater, Wheaton College, and the city of Wheaton, where he worked as outside counsel.
In 1972, after Pollard endured a health scare followed by surgery, then-Wheaton College President Hudson Armerding hired Pollard to join Wheaton College’s staff as vice president of finance. The role also included advancing fundraising efforts and teaching business courses.
In 1977, ServiceMaster executives Kenneth T. Wessner and Kenneth Hansen recruited Pollard to join their firm as a senior vice president overseeing legal and financial affairs, with an expectation that he might eventually lead the company. ServiceMaster’s origins were in onetime minor league baseball player Marion E. Wade’s 1929 founding of a mothproofing business. The company was formally incorporated as Wade Wenger Associates in 1947 by Wade and two associates, Hansen and Robert L. Wenger. The company added the ServiceMaster name in 1961.
Pollard was promoted to be executive vice president in 1980 and then president and chief operating officer in 1981 before he was named ServiceMaster’s CEO in 1983, succeeding Wessner. Pollard was instrumental in expanding ServiceMaster’s areas of specialty beyond its traditional work in rug and furniture cleaning for homes and offices.
On his watch, the business took on customers like hospitals and schools, offering services such as housekeeping, laundry and linen cleaning, plant and operations maintenance, clinical equipment, materials management, food service management and hospital-based home health care.
“Our business today has more balance and greater clarity as a management support service,” Pollard told the Tribune in 1986. “Our product is service and our greatest component is people.”
ServiceMaster found further customers in factories and educational institutions like colleges.
“What we provide ultimately results in better patient care in hospitals, better educational standards in schools and better support services in industrial settings,” Pollard told the Tribune. “We’re there to help the hospitals and their staffs perform their jobs to the best of their abilities. As a management service in hospitals, we’re there to take care of every part of the business that doesn’t have to do with doctoring and caring.”
Pollard also expanded ServiceMaster into lawn care and pest control. ServiceMaster acquired pest control company Terminix in 1986, and it bought the housecleaning firm Merry Maids in 1988 and the American Home Shields home service warranty business in 1989.
“I found Bill to be a good leader. I was so glad to be working for a man of principle,” said retired ServiceMaster Vice Chairman Charles W. Stair. “He had a really good mind. If you had a problem you were trying to figure out, he usually had a perspective that would get you going on it again from a different angle.”
ServiceMaster’s founders chose the company’s name to reflect its philosophy of literally “service to the Master” — God. Pollard sought to further that as CEO.
“We really do what the name of our company suggests, service to the Master,” he told the Tribune in 1986. “It’s part of us and the jobs we do. Our company cannot grow if the people in our company are not able to grow in every way. We’re a company of people. We recognize every person in the true image of God. Every person is different. The people here are more than a production unit and should be growing spiritually and mentally.”
Pollard added the role of chairman in 1990 upon Wessner’s retirement. Pollard retired as CEO in 1993 but remained chairman, and in 1996, he authored “The Soul of the Firm,” a 176-page book in which he spelled out ServiceMaster’s successes in developing its workforce.
Pollard became ServiceMaster’s CEO again in 1999 after his replacement, Carlos Cantu, retired amid a battle with stomach cancer. Shortly after that, ServiceMaster stumbled, in large measure due to two acquisitions, LandCare USA and American Residential Services.
Pollard sought to reassure investors in late 2000, telling the Tribune that “you’ve got to trust me. Those that have invested with us before … have made a lot of money.”
In 2001, Pollard retired once again as CEO, ceding the reins to Jonathan Ward, R.R. Donnelley & Sons’ former president and chief operating officer. Pollard retired as ServiceMaster’s chairman in 2002.
Today, ServiceMaster is based in Atlanta and handles janitorial services and professional home cleaning, among other services.
After retiring, Pollard practiced law for a time at the Wheaton-based law firm Huck Bouma.
Pollard served on the boards of Wheaton College, Central DuPage Hospital, furniture company Herman Miller, the Drucker Institute and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He was also an avid boater who sailed on Geneva Lake in Lake Geneva.
Pollard authored a 272-page memoir, “The Tides of Life,” which Crossway Books published in 2014, which explored his faith, his life principles, his management skills and how he navigated life’s choices. Evangelist Billy Graham penned the book’s foreword, writing that Pollard “takes seriously the privilege and responsibility of authentic leadership.”
Pollard is survived by his wife of almost 66 years, Judith; two daughters, Julie Grant and Amy Burdett; two sons, Charles “Chip” and Brian; 14 grandchildren; and 25 great-grandchildren.
Services are pending.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
