An artist’s rendering of a black Labrador named Schwarz graces a wall in Bill Matthaei’s office at Tacoma’s Roman Meal Co.

Along with serving as CEO of the family-owned company, Matthaei is a fly fisher and hunter, and he recalls one cold day several years ago when he was hunting geese in Eastern Washington with Schwarz at his side.

Matthaei shot at a goose, and the goose landed in the middle of a small, ice-covered lake. Schwarz ran onto the ice to retrieve the goose, and the goose, unhit, flew away.

The ice was too thin, and Schwarz fell in.

“He couldn’t get out,” Matthaei says. “I decided I couldn’t bear to leave him.”

Matthaei found a piece of lumber and crawled onto the ice, trying to disperse his weight. The ice broke. He fell in.

“I got out,” he says. “I pulled myself out with a hunting knife. The dog was still in the ice. I went back into the water. I pulled the dog out.”

Matthaei pulled himself out once again and the two hunters walked – for 30 minutes in 12-degree air – back to safety.

It’s a story about loyalty. It’s about a life lived with a decision, and without a regret that cannot be salvaged.

Bill Matthaei seems to be a happy man.

And now he has been named Business Leader of the Year by the Milgard School at the University of Washington Tacoma.

Pick an adjective. Diane Cecchettini, president and CEO of MultiCare Health System, calls him “a genuinely nice guy.” Lori Tanner, director of MultiCare’s Center for Healthy Living, calls him caring and thoughtful. Bob Ecklund, president and CEO of the YMCA of Tacoma-Pierce County, calls him steadfast. Gary Jensen, president of Roman Meal, calls him courageous and compassionate.

ROOTS

Matthaei was born at Tacoma General Hospital nearly 62 years ago. The family moved to Horsehead Bay about the time he entered school, and he graduated from Peninsula High in 1965.

The company he leads – and with his father owns – had its beginnings more than 300 years ago in Marburg, Germany. From Marburg to the Midwest, and from there to Tacoma, the Matthaei family has followed something of a credo about bread.

It’s quite simple. Bread is life.

In 1927, namesake William Matthaei enlarged the company by buying Roman Meal from a nutritional evangelist of sorts, Dr. Robert Jackson, who developed a cereal product, “Dr. Jackson’s Roman Health Meal,” which he manufactured in Tacoma. Roman Meal Bread followed, and is baked today by some 90 licensed bakeries worldwide.

Jackson was a contemporary of cereal kings Kellogg and Post, and was known as something of an “early-day Jack LaLanne,” according to Matthaei.

About the sale, he says, “We heard later from his wife’s grandson. Jackson was traveling the world, he’d given her power of attorney, and she sold the company to investment bankers. They shared the same accounting firm with my grandfather – maybe he could do something with it.”

Bill Matthaei studied economics at the University of Washington and cereal chemistry at North Dakota State. Postgraduate studies include a master’s degree in business from the University of Denver and a master’s in marine affairs from UW.

He served during the Vietnam era in the U.S. Navy, engaged in oceanographic research.

After serving as deputy secretary of the Pacific Salmon Commission, he heard that his brothers, who had been at Roman Meal, were planning to pursue other interests.

Bill told the family, “If you want to do something else, I’ll come back to Roman Meal.”

He’d worked there since he was a child, as children of business owners do.

“Typically on weekends I’d come down with my dad, or stay with my grandparents,” he recalls. “For the Christmas holidays, my granddad and dad would be baking Christmas cookies in the lab.”

He calls it “a whole-grain childhood,” as he and his brothers were “somewhat the guinea pigs” for the Roman Meal diet plan.

He worked at the company during school holidays and in the late ’60s served as liaison between the Tacoma plant and a newly acquired mill in North Dakota.

SALMON TO BREAD

“As I decided to rejoin the company, I asked myself why was it I’d come back,” Matthaei says. “One, we had a great opportunity with the growing interest in health and nutrition. Two, we had a very strong brand. I thought, if I can put the right group of people together, we should be able to make something of this.”

He describes himself as blessed by opportunity.

“Occasionally, people in a family business get stereotyped – dad forces people into the business. That certainly was not the case. We were free to choose our own paths, as I did. I had a perfect opportunity in marine affairs, in fisheries management. I had a clear career path. But it’s the Robert Frost fork in the road. The opportunity I saw for this industry seemed too good” to pass up.

Roman Meal, he says, is “somewhere you just belonged. We’ve been in business for 300 years – that’s a heck of a heritage, and I didn’t want to lose it on my watch.”

He sees his company as a family in itself, and his passion is nutrition.

Lately sidelined himself – he was recently engaged in a course of chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant – health remains an important part of the community he’s attempting to build.

“He actually started the Center for Healthy Living,” says Lori Tanner, director of the MultiCare facility. “His vision was to develop the center, a one-stop shop for individuals in Pierce County to look at their health, make changes, do physical activity, know nutrition. He’s a wonderful, caring, thoughtful gentleman. He cares about making a difference. His whole mission is to promote nutrition and healthy foods, to help make a difference by educating and providing nutrition.”

Diane Cecchettini, president and CEO of MultiCare Health System, calls Matthaei “authentic, and he’s a nice guy.”

Both he and Cecchettini ride the annual Courage Classic, a 174-mile bicycle trek that each summer crosses three mountain passes to raise funds for the needs of children in distress.

“I think he’s had a huge impact,” she says. “He’s been a role model for his employees. I think people look up to him, admire him. I watch him – you always watch a very talented leader. I’ve seen that with our foundation, board, and staff in my organization. He’s like a quiet, humble guy.”

2+2=4, USUALLY

It may sound simple – treat your employees well, be honest in your dealings, do your best – but it’s not.

Matthaei recalls a professor at the University of Denver. Matthaei was flummoxed while attempting to understand the workings within nonlinear equations.

“I remember going to him. He said, ‘This is like the real world. There aren’t any answers at the back of the book.’”

At Roman Meal, Matthaei finds his answers in the mission.

“It’s nice to be in a business where we’re doing something, making products that are good for people,” he says. “I think it’s easier for me to feel there’s value in our mission versus if we were making ball bearings.”

His philosophy of leadership finds its foundation in the sentiment that “I feel like I’m a steward of this business. I see this as a long-term, ongoing entity.”

Roman Meal, he says, “is a small company. We’re pretty conservative. My dad has made a few ‘bet the company’ decisions, in 1969 when we bought the first mill in North Dakota, and in 1973 when our licenses with bakers evolved from regional to national. We canceled existing agreements – we could have been left out there without any business. There were times when we took a lot of risk. My vision for growth is like a splash in the water, expanding outwardly in an evolutionary way.”

The company has not recently made any acquisitions, “but there’s room to think about that, something synergistic to our current business.”

He does expect to continue expanding the trademark beyond bread – most recently into snack bars and a new line of cereals.

“Go back to Frost,” he says. “The road taken, (and not) the popular bottom-line paradigm that some people follow. There are community and family values to benefit the small business willing to persevere. There’s a corporate and family heritage that makes us part of the community. Stewardship for the company and being a part of this community are my real motivations, beyond any business operations.”

“He’s a hero of mine,” says Bob Ecklund, president and CEO of the YMCA of Tacoma-Pierce County. “Bill is a quiet leader. There are some people who are flamboyant or boisterous – but he really embraces hearing all points of view. He enriches every conversation he’s a part of. He’s just a gracious man. Even when he’s disagreeing, he does it with dignity. He’s a builder of people and community.”

For nearly five years an executive with, and now president of Roman Meal, Gary Jensen has known about the company, and Bill Matthaei, for some 20 years.

“I had the opportunity to get to know the brand and the family as a customer,” he says. “I was always impressed by their passion for health and whole grains. Bill believes in what we do on a daily basis. I routinely see him honor his mother and father while he manages a business in a challenging environment.”

“We’ve worked together for 31 years,” says Rich Axlund, president of Dakota Specialty Milling of Fargo, N.D. Axlund has worked at Roman Meal as bakery division president, CFO, treasurer and in other positions, and now operates the mill owned by Bill Matthaei and his immediate family.

“He’s probably one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to know,” Axlund says. “He’s an honest guy, a fair guy, an ethical guy. He had four years in the Navy – he understands the structure of things and how people react to different types of leadership. If ever I made a mistake, I knew he wouldn’t come back at me and jump and shout.”

IRON WILL, STEEL HEAD

It’s difficult to imagine under what circumstances Matthaei would indeed jump and shout. So it is with steadfast leaders and many fly fishers.

Across the office from that depiction of Schwarz the Labrador retriever, near a 30-year-old well-worn leather chair, on Matthaei’s desk stands a bust of Winston Churchill.

“He persevered,” says Matthaei.

And on a wall near the desk is a photo of Bill himself, standing midstream, casting, crowned both by sunlight and a fly line carving thin curves above quiet water.

“I have a master’s in business and a Ph.D. in fly fishing,” he says. “I guess I just enjoy standing in the river.”

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535

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