Joseph H. Lemieux, who rose through the ranks from administrative trainee to chief executive and chairman of Owens-Illinois, the leading glass bottle and packaging firm with headquarters then in downtown Toledo, died Tuesday at Hospice of Northwest Ohio, South Detroit Avenue. He was 92.

He had Alzheimer’s disease and was in declining health, especially the last six months, his son, Jerry Lemieux, said. The longtime Ottawa Hills resident lived most recently in Woodlands at Otterbein Sunset House.

Mr. Lemieux’s career began in 1957, and he retired at the end of 2003 as CEO, the position he’d held since 1990. He became chairman in 1991, and he last led an annual shareholder’s meeting in May, 2004, at One Seagate, then the company headquarters.

“He was a giant in the industry. He had no peers,” said Clifford Jones, former president of Anchor Glass Container Corp., who in the early 1980s was an executive of Latchford Glass Co. in Los Angeles when they became friends.

“He knew what the industry was all about and what it needed,’ Mr. Jones said.

The company, now known as O-I Glass, moved its headquarters to Perrysburg in 2006.

Mr. Lemieux steered O-I through uncertain waters, taking the helm after the leveraged buyout in 1987 by the New York investment firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which resulted in the publicly traded firm going private for a time, the spinning off of some units – from nursing homes to mortgage banking – plus adapting to the public’s diminishing use of glass containers and the persistent threat of asbestos liabilities.

“We never thought it would last as long as it did,” Mr. Lemieux told shareholders at that 2004 annual meeting, referring to asbestos claims against the company. Yet he announced those liabilities would not cause O-I to seek bankruptcy protection, as another Toledo company, Owens Corning, by then had done.

"I personally think Joe Lemieux represented stability and continuity in an organization that went through very rough times," the late William Niehous, a retired O-I vice president, said in 2003 to the late Homer Brickey, then Blade senior business writer.

By September, 2005, KKR had sold all but a fraction of its O-I shares and the last of the KKR directors had left the board.

“He wanted to see the perpetuation of Owens-Illinois as a Toledo company, not a division of some company in France or Chicago,” the younger Mr. Lemieux said. “That game was the long game.

“It was a challenging time,” said his son, a former president of O-I Americas Glass. “He had a consistent message: We’re going to perpetuate the company.”

Mike McDaniel, who retired in 2006 as president of the O-I’s closure division, said he knew Mr. Lemieux as an executive who understood what it took to run the business.

“I got to find a man who was down to earth, always looked at the impact his decisions would have on the employees,” Mr. McDaniel said. “He was a private person. He made you comfortable in his presence. He made you feel you were part of a team.”

Mr. Lemieux was known as low key, rarely gave interviews to reporters, and was not publicly identified as active in civic causes, in contrast to his immediate predecessors Robert Lanigan and Edwin Dodd.

“We have a very heavy debt,” Mr. Lemieux told The Blade in 1991, “so our role right now, as far as commitment to Toledo, is that we had better make sure O-I survives healthy.”

His public reticence wasn’t intended as commentary on O-I past leaders.

“That was just his temperament,” the younger Mr. Lemieux said. “He didn’t want any of that limelight for him, and he didn't think the company needed it.

“He had an ability to draw people into his circle who trusted his vision and his intellect. He was sharp, but it wasn’t in a show-offy way,” his son said. “His legacy was always his family.”

That relative anonymity also allowed him a freedom in public, as when he’d wager $2 at the track.

“The trappings of things people think are important was not my father,” the younger Mr. Lemieux said. “He could go to Raceway Park and nobody would know who he was. He wouldn’t look like the CEO.

“He led a very modest life. He never had a second home and stayed in Toledo so he could be around the grandkids. It was not the CEO lifestyle.”

In 1997, he received the Phoenix award, the glass industry’s top worldwide honor. During Mr. Lemieux’s tenure, O-I became the largest manufacturer of glass containers in the Americas and India and the second largest in Europe.

He was born March 2, 1931, in Providence, R.I., to Mildred and Joseph Camille Lemieux, who were union textile workers.

“Coming from that union background always made him relate to the people who made up the majority of the [O-I] workforce,” his son said.

He was a standout basketball and baseball player while in high school. He attended Stonehill College, Easton, Mass., on an athletic scholarship, but after a year joined the Air Force and served four years with the Strategic Air Command, stationed in Alaska and Arizona.

He graduated with honors from Bryant College in Providence, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

From O-I administrative trainee in 1957, Mr. Lemieux became accounting supervisor of the glass container plant in Bridgeton, N.J., and later comptroller and cost control and accounting supervisor.

He became plant manager in Gas City, Ind., in 1965, followed by plant manager stints in Waco, Texas, and Alton, Ill.

He was named a division vice president in 1972, and the family settled in Ottawa Hills.

He was elected a corporate vice president in 1974 and received increasing responsibility through the decade. He became vice president of the worldwide Glass Container Group in 1982, executive vice president of O-I and president packaging operations in 1984, and company president in 1986.

He was a supporter of Corpus Christi University Parish and helped establish a scholarship program at St. John’s Jesuit High School. He traveled to seven Summer Olympics, through the Sydney games of 2000.

“He was a high-powered CEO and a very strong practical joker,” Mr. Jones said. “He was a captain of industry and about as tough as nails as you could be. But he was a genuine person and loved his family deeply and loved his friends.”

His daughter Cheryl died in December, 1978.

Surviving are his wife, the former Joanne Schmidt, whom he married Aug. 11, 1956; sons Gerald Lemieux and Craig Lemieux; daughters Kimberly Wolff and Allison Smith; brother, William Lemieux; sister, Helen Tavares; 15 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial celebration of his life event is planned for June, 2024.

The family suggests tributes to Hospice of Northwest Ohio or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis.

First Published December 10, 2023, 5:00 a.m.