2017_Annual Report_single page

sense a potential conflict and head it off at the
pass.
“He was smart. His preferred approach was to
compromise rather than take a vote. I think it
tells you a lot when an attorney says, ‘Hey, we’re
above the black and white stuff. We’re working
at a higher, more human level.’ We like that
approach.”
Ted’s predecessor as president and CEO is his
84-year-old father, Tom, who still comes into the
The family business had reached a point where Loretta Sedler knew
it could use legal representation. Her husband, Frank, had died two
years earlier, and it was important to her to find an attorney she could
trust. Which is how she and her two sons, Tom and Frank, came to call
on Nelson Schwab, then a junior partner at what was then known as
Graydon, Head & Ritchey.
An oil painting of Loretta Sedler hanging in the company’s westside
headquarters
That would have been sometime around 1946. Today, Home City Ice is
the largest family-owned ice company in America. It does business in
16 states and operates 40-plus ice-making facilities with a combined
capacity of more than 6,500 tons per day. The company has been
under Sedler family ownership for 93 years – including some 70 years
as a Graydon client.
“Nelson went on to have bigger clients – I think he kept us because we
were a sentimental favorite and because we were his first corporate
client,” says Ted Sedler, Loretta’s grandson and Home City’s president
and CEO.
“Nelson always did a very good job of making sure all the family
members – and there have always been a good number of cousins
– never had to vote on anything. He worked it out so we came to a
consensus before we actually had to take a vote. He had an ability to
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