The aging Zeus of H&S Bakery, a man born into a simple family business now 70 years old with annual sales of $800 million, John Paterakis has a few things in his Fells Point office that explain a lot. Beneath the calm gaze of his mother Kyriaki – a gentle woman from the island of Chios, her portrait in oil on the wall facing his desk is a low shelf of books that people thought Paterakis should read. They include business texts and C. Fraser Smith’s biography of the late William Donald Schaefer, with whom the businessman long maintained a friendly and mutually beneficial relationship. With the pride of a self-made man who never went to college, Paterakis says he hasn’t read any of them.
Curio cabinets are filled with trinkets of gratitude from some of the major politicians of our time, including a heroic figurine of Schaefer, the Baltimore mayor, Maryland governor, and state comptroller who died in 2011.
“Schaefer used to sit alone in a conference room we named for his mother [Tululu] and talk to her after she died,” recalls Paterakis, sharing a story with a visitor. “He’d sit and talk to his mother for half an hour. He was a little odd.”
A framed invitation from 1972 bears the seal of the Vice President of the United States and the signature of Spiro Agnew, fellow Baltimorean and Greek-American. Outside the office is a large photo of Paterakis with George W. Bush. (Paterakis’s advice to his heirs: “Always be involved in whatever you can politically, but never run for public offices.”)
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