St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)

Monday

 

by  Deanna Weniger

 

Rev. Harry Maghakian was the definition of a people person.

 

 

 

 

So it was fitting that on May 15 the founder of People Incorporated was surrounded by those he loved most as he quietly passed away at age 94 at North Memorial Medical Hospital in Maple Grove.

 

"We got to pray around his bed," said his daughter Sally O'Keefe. "We got to thank him and tell him we loved him. And we got to sing."

 

Maghakian is best known by his work with People Incorporated, an organization that started with cookies and coffee for homeless vets at Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church and has grown to be the largest community mental health provider in Minnesota.

 

"Harry left a huge footprint in terms of working with vulnerable individuals in our community," said Jill Wiedemann-West, CEO of People Incorporated.

 

Maghakian was born inside the safety of the U.S. borders in 1924, shortly after his parents arrived while fleeing the Armenian genocide in Turkey during World War I.

 

He spent most of his childhood in Los Angeles, playing baseball and body surfing until America was drawn into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

He enlisted on his own and had a cyst removed from his back at his request so he could go to Europe and fight with the 10th Armored Division. He earned a Purple Heart.

 

When the war was over, he started a real estate business called Mag Realty (Mag being short for Maghakian). He married his wife, Judy, on a Friday the 13th in 1959. Despite the ominous date, they remained happily married for 59 years.

 

They were always together, OKeefe said. She was his right hand and his back and his feet.

 

They had two children (Sally and David), four grandchildren and one great grandchild.

 

After succeeding in real estate, Maghakian began to realize the love of money had a dark side. He decided to leave the business and become a Presbyterian minister. That decision led him to St. Paul, where he was ordained in 1962.

 

In an interview with Pioneer Press columnist Gareth Heibert in 1964, Maghakian explained his sudden change of heart.

 

Well, my switch to the ministry wasnt any flash of light or vision or hearing a voice, he said. I began to get fed up with the phonies in this world, the wheelers and dealers and the money-hungry status seekers who sit back in their big overstuffed chairs, mourn the people who need faith and dont do anything about it.

 

He looked for a church in a neighborhood with obvious need. That turned out to be the Dayton/Selby neighborhood, which at the time was the rough side of town where homeless people hung out. They bought a house on Portland Avenue near Webster (now Obama) Elementary School.

 

Right down in the center of the big city where life is in a state of flux and they need some help and encouragement, Maghakian told Heibert.

 

OKeefe remembered it a little differently.

 

We had our house broken into so many times, she said. It was just our way of life.

 

Her dad opted to leave the front door open to avoid any more broken windows.

 

Maghakian discovered that being a salesman and being in ministry had similarities. They both involved people skills, something he had in abundance.

 

My dads personality was so vivacious, OKeefe said. People never called him Reverend. He was always Harry. He walked with the people. He laughed at himself. He always made people feel welcome.

 

He and his wife set to work filling up the church calendar with outreach ministries.

 

Maghakian noticed the house directly behind the church was a boardinghouse for otherwise homeless veterans. Many of them had self-medicated to treat their PTSD and had become addicted to alcohol or drugs.

 

After the vets were given breakfast in the morning, they had to leave the house until evening. They wandered the street with nothing to do.

 

We opened the door of the church, Maghakian said in a video on the People Incorporated website. We had free cookies and coffee. We got ash trays there for them to smoke, which is against my principles, but we said thats an enticement of how you minister. But thats where it started.

 

He used his real estate skills to buy homes and convert them into halfway houses so the mentally disabled and addicts could stay in a home-like environment rather than an institution.

 

Maghakian stayed busy. By 1974, with the help of other churches, he had a long list of accomplishments.

 

Developed Liberty Plaza, a nonprofit housing corporation which built and renovated 173 housing units;Created People Incorporated as a halfway house program for alcoholics and those with mental illnesses;Formed a teen drop-in center called The Loft;Began a Montessori Day Care Center in the church;Formed a tutorial program for children;Began a weekly homemakers program in cooperation with the YWCA; andDeveloped a maternal infant care clinic in cooperation with the county hospital.

 

Today, People, Inc. has a $50 million budget, employees 700 people, offers more than 60 programs in 40 locations and seven counties, and serves 13,000 individuals each year.

 

Maghakian retired twice first from the church in 1990 and then from ministry in 2014.

 

After stepping down from the church, he and his wife traveled the world. Even in their time off, they managed to find people in need, such as the refuseniks in the Soviet Union (individuals who were denied permission to emigrate) and orphans in Guatemala.

 

He was one of those individuals that really saw the human condition, Wiedemann-West said. It motivated him to make it better for people.

 

There will be a memorial service for him June 9 at New Life Presbyterian Church, 965 Larpenteur Ave., in Roseville. Visitation is at 10 a.m., followed by a service at 11 a.m. and a luncheon at noon.