Linda J. Hartinger-Lee, the chief executive of Anchor Paper, one of St. Paul’s oldest family-run and employee-owned companies, died Feb. 22 after a battle with cancer. She was 58.
In November, she was among a series of Twin Cities leaders honored by the National Association of Women Business Owners, which recognized her long history with the 91-year-old company.
Hartinger-Lee lived in St. Paul and trained as a respiratory therapist in the 1970s, going on to work in the therapy field for five years before being groomed to take over the paper business her father ran before her. Hamel Hartinger retired in 1994.
She met her husband, a fellow therapist, more than 30 years ago while working at the former Miller Hospital in downtown St. Paul, which was later demolished after the merger that created United Hospital.
“She was absolutely wonderful,” said her husband, Robert Lee. “She gave and gave and gave, and she’s going to be greatly missed. She was an extraordinary woman.”
At the start, she worked in every department of Anchor Paper, getting paid minimum wage while doing product inventories by hand and taking night business classes at the University of Minnesota. For a time, her sister Elizabeth Hartinger became the director of Anchor Paper’s retail stores.
The company was formed by a series of partners in 1923 and major ownership was sold five years later to her grandfather, Howard Allan “Dick” Hartinger, who became company president. Anchor carved an ongoing niche for itself in the late 1930s by supplying laboratories with patented testing papers for seed-germination experiments. It also produces fine paper and industrial paper products, from wrapping to boxes.
Hamel Hartinger bought Anchor Paper in its entirety in 1980, and 40 percent of company shares were sold to employees in 1990. Hartinger-Lee became company president in 2001 and CEO in 2004.
Hartinger-Lee’s daughter Brooke Lee, a fourth-generation Hartinger, joined Anchor as an industrial supplies and seed-germination paper specialist in 2006. Brooke Lee is expected to take over as company president.
The company announced last year that it would shutter its Anchor Paper Express retail location at University Avenue and Eustis Street in St. Paul, near Minnesota 280, and open a new retail location in Roseville. The University Avenue store had been in place since 1993.
The company still maintains its original retail site in Plymouth, which opened in 1990. The company also owns Packaging Converters, a custom packaging materials company in Hudson, Wis.
The Anchor Paper headquarters are at 480 Broadway St. in downtown St. Paul.
Visitation will be from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Willwerscheid Funeral Home in St. Paul. A service will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, with a reception to follow.
Hartinger-Lee is survived by her husband, father, sister and two daughters.
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.