The Hayward family helped build Monterey County over the last century, and now leads it into the future.

Hayward Lumber is about to celebrate 100 years in Monterey County – no small feat, considering the company has survived the Great Depression, World War II and other swings in the economy. Through it all, the Hayward family is what has kept the company together, and it’s the fourth generation that’s leading the business today.

The business was launched in 1919 by Homer T. Hayward, when he moved his family from Southern California to Salinas. His son Arthur took over as president in 1928, serving until 1946, and is credited with keeping the business going through the Great Depression. His son Homer M. Hayward fought in WWII, and just one week after he returned home, Arthur passed away, leaving the 24-year-old veteran in charge.

The younger Homer led the business for 47 years, until 1993, when his son Bill Hayward succeeded as chairman, president and CEO at age 36. Bill restructured the company through several recessions, including the Great Recession from 2008-2011, when the company faced one of its greatest challenges to remaining in business.

The company is now headquartered in Monterey as the Hayward Corporation, with seven lumberyards on the Central Coast and in the San Francisco Bay Area – including two original locations in Pacific Grove and Salinas. In recent years, Bill has given the company a new vision of building healthier homes and employing green building methods, which he began championing in the late 1990s.

“As an early advocate for green, people literally thought we were crazy,” Bill told the Weekly in 2016.

They formed the Hayward Healthy Home Institute, which did more than 2,000 hours of research into why homes turn toxic and how to make them healthier, sharing that information with the public. It also led to products under Hayward’s Envirosmart brand, including energy-efficient windows, doors, air quality systems and others.

“As we move to the future, the issue is, how can housing be healthier?” Hayward says. “Our big focus is on the principles of building healthy, nontoxic materials and ventilation in houses.”

Recently, the company launched Hayward Score, which is an online questionnaire to help understand how your house is affecting your health.

“We’re trying to bring that knowledge back to our builders,” Hayward says. “It’s thinking of buildings as a system.”