Scurrying for survival: rags-to-riches developer Bill Keller struggles to maintain upbeat attitude.

Bill Keller is the classic example of the self-made millionaire.

He was born during the Depression, grew up the poor son of a butcher and worked his way through the ranks in the construction business without a college education, eventually starting and succeeding at running his own company.

But there is an ironic twist to this rags-to-riches story.

Keller now faces the daunting possibility of retiring and turning the business over to his son at the worst financial period ever for his business -- a time when his company's revenues have been halved in the past two years, and he has been forced to lay off some of his best people, all because of a real estate recession that likely will get worse before it gets better.

At the age of 64, the founder and chief executive officer of Keller Construction Co. sits in his sparsely decorated office in an El Monte industrial complex he built, looking over his cabinets filled with lawsuits (most of them filed against Keller by subcontractors in connection with projects in which the developer came up short and stopped paying the bills), and wonders aloud: "Why am I putting up with this? Why don't I just get out?

"It's the most difficult time I've ever experienced," he says. "This is a survival time. Guys I used to work for are looking for work. Some of the developers I know have lost everything, including their house. It is really very sobering."

Later, he laughs and admits: "I was going to try to be positive in this interview. My son accuses me of being too negative."

Keller was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1928.

"We didn't starve, but we didn't have any money at all," he recalls. "We had no indoor plumbing."

Keller's father wanted him to follow in his footsteps, so Keller worked part-time as a teenager cutting meat at a Vancouver Safeway store during World War II. He remembers long lines of homemakers, with ration coupons and tokens, fighting for his attention.

"It was tough," he says. "Women intimidated me at that time. I decided it wasn't for me."

About two years after graduating from high school, Keller obtained a job as a laborer, part of a crew that built a wing onto a hospital. He had found his niche.

"I thought, 'This is so exciting.' There wasn't the stress of dealing with people. There was no stress at all," he remembers. "I really loved it. I fell in love with construction."

He spent four years as an apprentice carpenter and went on to become a construction foreman. In 1961, he met a man named Peter Kewitt, who had an Omaha-based construction firm, and he went to work for him in Arcadia. He moved his wife and two children to California at that time.

In 1966, he quit to form his own contracting firm.

"I really started out as a little guy with a pick-up truck," he says.

Two years later, he met Tom Grant, a residential builder, and they merged their companies to form Keller & Grant Construction Co., which prospered and grew for 10 years.

Keller's only regret seems to be that he worked so hard, "virtually all the time" in those days, that he had little time to spend with his children, who are now grown. He works with his son, but his daughter is a chef in San Francisco.

In 1972, Keller met architect Herb Nadel, who wound up working on 60 projects with Keller over the next 20 years and becoming a very good friend. Virtually all of Keller's friends have some connection to his business. Nadel says that is because Keller, like him, "eats, sleeps and breathes" the business.

"His professional life is his personal life," says Nadel of his friend. "You're not going to find Bill Keller bowling or playing pool or doing something crazy. He has a tremendous work ethic."

By 1978, both Grant and Keller had become millionaires. At that time, Grant decided to move to Rancho Santa Fe, and the partnership broke up. Keller took over the local company, took back the name Keller Construction Co., and returned to his commercial building focus.

"Between 1978 and 1983, I built a lot of office buildings in the $2-million-to-$5-million range. I was literally turning down work," he says. His big year was 1985, when he had $100 million in business, up from $30 million in 1983.

Today the company is back down to $50 million in annual sales, having been hit hard by the real estate industry recession, but is still profitable, he says.

In order to stay in the black, Keller has diversified, launching a retrofitting division, branching out into projects in Hawaii and getting involved in joint ventures. He has also cut staff.

"We might have to continue to lay people off. To ride it out, you just have to keep shaving people; it's cost control," says Keller. "It's depressing firing good people when you know these people can't find another job."

Nadel says Keller has become so upset about layoffs and cost cutting and the recession that "he calls me up and tells me how scared he is.

"It's gotten worse. I can't sleep. I'm up all the time. I'm agonizing, and I know Bill is the same way," says Nadel. "It's just so devastating; it's just beyond imagination. Our world we live in here in Southern California is crashing down around our ears, and may continue to do so for five years, or even 10 years."

Keller says he and his remaining employees "are working harder now than ever before."

"We are leaving the state (on projects)," he adds, "which we never did before."

But he has no intention of moving his headquarters.

"These are where my roots are," he says, looking out his second-story window, past the street to the traffic traveling east on Interstate 10 (the San Bernardino Freeway) across the San Gabriel Valley, toward his home in Glendora. "I built this street. I built this building. I own this building."

In 1990, Keller made four "key people" his partners, collectively giving them 50 percent of the stock in Keller Construction Co. Ltd. The other 50 percent is held by Keller Construction, Co. Inc., which is owned solely by Keller and his wife, Delores.

The new partners are: his son Paul, president of Keller Construction Co. Ltd.; Tom Keeton, executive vice president and general manager; Steve Converse, vice president/projects development; and Bob Stage, chief estimator.

Son Paul, like his father, worked his way up in the business, starting out at age 15 cleaning construction sites on the weekends, and learning every aspect of the business without the benefit of a college education.

Says Bill Keller: "It's not the only way, but it's a damn good way."