Wonderful Life of Bill Miller

The Lives of Bill and Mimi Miller

After a Summer of fun in 1954 I moved up North to the little town of Eugene, Oregon and attended the University of Oregon. It was long before the “Animal House” reputation. I studied Marketing within the Business School at the University. I finished my degree in 1958 and was ready to tackle the fascinating world of big business.
My first job was working for E.I. du Pont Company in Wilmington, Delaware as an Advertising Trainee. Although I enjoyed my work as I learned du Pont’s advertising philosophy my thoughts were still in Eugene where Mimi was finishing up her senior year at the University. After she finished her degree we married and she moved back to Wilmington to help me with my emerging career.
It seems that the career needed at least one more addition to be successful as we had our first child, LeeAnne in 1961. Shortly after LeeAnne’s birth we encountered one of my many career moves as du Pont assigned me to work in Southern California.
Always interested in new challenges I went to work for Ernest and Julio Gallo and their growing wine business. For a short time I worked out of Houston, Texas to open up the wine market in the South for Gallo. After having success in several of the Southern States Gallo moved me to their Modesto, California headquarters. Gallo was the largest wine producer in the United States and a privately owned business so it was very interesting to see how it operated.
It seemed that the family of three could not do all the work without adding another member. So in 1965 we added Peter our son to our household.
After about five years with Gallo I left and we moved to Portland, Oregon where Mimi was raised and I went to work for an advertising company. As I worked for the advertising company I went back to school and finished my MBA at Portland State University.
So now we had even room for more in the family so in 1969 we added our second daughter Katie. You can tell my work load kept increasing and I needed all this help from our growing family.
So after awhile with restlessness and new opportunity we moved to Alamo, California and I went to work for Pillsbury. They were a very large growing food conglomerate. In Alamo we enjoyed raising our family and being around many old friends like Ann and Buddy Needham.
After several years we moved back to Oregon and I worked for a wine company and another large food conglomerate, Lamb-Weston. Mimi was happy to be back in old familiar territory with family and friends nearby.
All this moving and experience led me eventually to become the President and CEO of Red Robin International. It was a big responsibility to run an international company but I enjoyed it immensely.
Along the way I played a lot of golf and did a lot of fly fishing. We even had a large motor boat to cruise along the Columbia and through the San Juan Islands to the top of Vancouver Island in Canada. We also traveled a lot for business and some for pleasure in Western and Eastern Europe and in Southeast Asia.
Mimi has always been a great partner in our business life and in our family life. Much of my success has been due to her help and diligence. She often had to move us as I went ahead to my new job with little notice and then get the children settled into new schools. She often had to entertain one of my business associates with little time or notice. So my career has been a great partnership from the beginning. By the way we are celebrating our 50 years of marriage this year.
Also we are very proud of our adult children and their successes. Our daughter LeeAnne is currently an HR manager for a startup software company in Portland. Our son Peter is a partner in a finance company in Portland. Finally our daughter Katie lives in Amsterdam and is working in advertising. She had to follow her dad’s first business love. They seem to represent the three legs of my own career with the added grace of Mimi’s personality.
We now have five wonderful grand children that visit us at Black Butte Ranch, Oregon where we have retired.