Tuesday, January 27, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- In London is a plaque that honors Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who drew the plans to restore 52 churches in that city, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, after the Great Fire of 1666.
It reads, “Lector si monumentum requiris circumspice,” Latin for, “Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.”
Harry Meshel, who has secured more funding for the Mahoning Valley, including Youngstown State University and the Youngstown Business Incubator, should one day have a similar plaque in Youngstown.
The university buildings or rooms in university halls named after him, the museums and parks he’s funded run into the double-digits.
At YSU, where he is a trustee, are Meshel Hall and the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, better known as the Steel Museum, which he helped to build. In Struthers is Meshel Way that leads to Castlo Industrial Park, for which he secured the initial funding.
The Northeast Ohio Medical University in Rootstown – Meshel was one of the midwives at its birth – has a hall named for him.
In Lake Milton State Park, another project for which he as state senator wrote legislation to fund, is the Harry Meshel Picnic Area.
On the near north side of Youngstown, Turning Point Counseling has named a room in his honor. And Masco – Mahoning Adult Services Co. – in Youngstown, has named a room in his honor. Masco has another building in Boardman.
Wright State University in Dayton has a school of professional psychology where a room is named for the senator who represented the state’s 33rd district from Jan. 3, 1971, until April 13, 1993.
The funds Meshel directed to education in the Valley and in support of economic development, recreation and social services today would approach $500 million, adjusted for inflation, estimates Scott Schulick, a former president of the YSU trustees, including $150 million for YSU.
“I can’t think of anyone whose life work has had more impact on Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley, especially Youngstown,” Schulick says. “We all owe Harry Meshel for his unwavering commitment to the Mahoning Valley.”
The man who spent some 20 hours interviewing Meshel on video for the oral history archive at YSU, Hugh Earnhart, says, “Harry made a lot of contributions to YSU. Sometimes he was subtle, but he got a lot done and a lot of that hasn’t been [widely] recognized.”
Earnhart, a retired American history professor at YSU, established its oral history program. What was reinforced as he interviewed Meshel, Earnhart says, is his commitment to helping others.
“When you look at his life,” the historian says, “it’s been all about helping those who couldn’t help themselves. He’s had the attitude, ‘The rich’ll take care of themselves. It’s the poor that need help.’ ”
At 90, Meshel still has the energy of men one-third his age and his mind is as sharp as ever. “People half his age don’t have his energy,” Schulick marvels. “Harry won’t sit still. He has to be busy.
He calls Meshel “a born leader” who inspires others because of “his optimism that tomorrow will be better. … He’s a problem solver.”
Says Earnhart, “Harry has a mousetrap mind. He remembers things and has a good sense of history.”
Space does not permit even the most cursory recounting of Meshel’s life and career. Sufficient to say he’s accomplished more, been involved in more, traveled more widely, to benefit this Valley than almost anyone else in its history.
Take just his travels. On behalf of establishing or strengthening Ohio companies’ commercial ties in Asia, Meshel has been to China five times, Japan four, Taiwan three and Korea once.
As a Seabee during World War II, Meshel served nearly a year in New Guinea before taking part in the first wave of U.S. forces to retake the Philippine Islands (where he learned to speak Tagalog and won two Bronze Stars in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944).
In addition to Greek (“I learned to speak Greek before I learned English”), Meshel is conversant in Italian, Spanish and Serbian. His late wife’s parents were Serbian immigrants.
As a state senator, he visited Nigeria to help open the first Ohio trade office there (since closed), Egypt five times (where he met longtime strongman Hosni Mubarek) and Israel five times.
On business or pleasure, Meshel has been “in almost every country in Europe,” Colombia in South America and Aruba just off its northern coast.
Meshel, the son of Greek immigrants born in Crete, was born here June 13, 1924, and grew up on the east side of Youngstown, one of six children.
He’s still “frosted [that] my last name [Michelakis] was misspelled on my birth certificate, my mother’s maiden name [Markakis] too,” as he produces a copy of the document.
After he established himself in politics, “I considered changing it back,” he relates. Former Mahoning County Probate Judge Tim Maloney dissuaded him. “Nobody would know you,” he told Meshel.
Meshel grew up during tough times in a tough neighborhood. “You didn’t take any nonsense from anybody,” he says.
The favorite sport of the boys he played with was boxing, not baseball (played in the streets), football or basketball. “Everybody on my street was a boxer. We all had gloves,” he remembers.
It was the root of his love of the sport and in the Ohio Senate he sponsored legislation that created the Ohio Boxing Commission, which later became the Ohio Athletic Commission. On a visit to Israel, as a member of the International Boxing Council, he helped put on an exhibition match in Nazareth.
He grew up in The Great Depression, attending the McGuffey and Madison schools before entering East High, graduating in 1941. In grade school, he took Greek classes after the last bell and was an altar boy six years. That included being tonsured. And he met the Greek Orthodox archbishop for North and South America who went on to become the patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul).
Young Harry used a magnet to scavenge for metal that could be recycled, the proceeds of which helped to support his family.
When World War II broke out, Meshel and his boyhood friends wanted to enlist in the Marines and drove to Akron. (Youngstown lacked a Marine Corps recruiting station.) The Marines were oversubscribed, they learned, so they volunteered for the Naval Construction Battalion, better known as the Seabees. He did undergo Marine Corps boot camp before transferring to the Navy.
After his discharge in 1946, Meshel used the G.I. Bill to enroll in Youngstown College, graduating with honors in three years.
Using what was left of his G.I. Bill benefits, he went on to earn his master’s degree in urban land economics at Columbia University. There he sat in a finance class with Warren E. Buffett, today chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Meshel graduated in 1950 and returned home.
While attending Youngstown, Meshel had worked in the open hearth of the Ohio Works of U.S. Steel Corp. The steelmaker’s need for labor allowed him a flexible schedule so he could work 30 to 40 hours a week, study hard and be involved in extracurricular activities.
Before he was elected to the state Senate in 1970, Meshel twice ran for county commissioner and lost. He became Mayor Anthony B. Flask’s administrative assistant in 1964 and served as urban renewal director in 1969, Flask’s sixth and last year in office.
Meshel looks back fondly at the decade and considers Flask “the best mayor we ever had by far.”
Meshel’s work ethic, instilled in him as a boy, was strengthened and refined as he grew up. He told how he stayed up to read every significant bill introduced in the Senate, and paid even closer attention when he was majority leader (the Democrats held a one-vote margin) in 1983 and 1984.
He knew what was in the bills and was prepared to support others in their goals in return for their support of his.
Hard work and brooking no nonsense are only two ingredients of success in politics, business or education. Meshel, with his gregarious and outgoing personality, greets people with warmth and friendliness, is quick with a quip or witticism, and expects those he deals with to be forthright and honest. As a man of his word, he expects others to be people of their word, regardless of party and whether they agrees or disagrees with him.
Of his years in the Senate, whether in the minority or the two year as majority leader, Meshel turned Republican senators into friends and is proud to say, “Some of my best friends were Republican governors,” including James A. Rhodes, the only man to serve 16 years as the state’s top executive.
Meshel didn’t hesitate to confront the Democratic governors when he thought they were shortchanging the Mahoning Valley.
“I had a fight with every governor down there, Rhodes, [John] Gilligan, [Richard] Celeste,” Meshel says, firmness in his voice. The latter two were Democrats.
Schulick had not met Meshel when Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, appointed him to the YSU Board of Trustees in 2007. “His preparedness. His work ethic,” Schulick begins. “If every trustee prepared as well as Harry did [when Schulick was president] … He knew all the background and the ORC [Ohio Revised Code] and the legislation in other states” relevant to the administration of public universities. “If somebody told Harry something couldn’t be done, he’d find a way.”
“Harry has a way of getting things done,” Earnhart says, citing the trustee’s latest involvement at YSU, the Veterans Center on Wick Avenue just north of the president’s residence.
Another key to Meshel’s effectiveness, as Earnhart says, is “He’ll hold people accountable.” That doesn’t result in popularity but Meshel enjoys the respect, however grudging of adversaries and opponents, and the gratitude of his friends, allies and supporters.
Meshel is 90, the same age the British architect Wren lived to, and aware of his mortality. He’s been emptying his basement, making the first floor look like a museum being inventoried as he decides the institutions that should get his art, papers, souvenirs and trophies.
“What have you left behind? What have you done on earth?” he asks as he tells the stories behind a small fraction of his collection.
Although few know its extent, the residents of the Mahoning Valley benefit from Meshel’s legacy every day.
Pictured: Harry Meshel is taking inventory of his life’s collections, deciding what institutions should get his art, papers, souvenirs and trophies.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth profile in our series “Most Intriguing People of 2014.” Others profiled in our series, published in the January edition of The Business Journal, are Jim Cossler, Sam Covelli and Ralph Meacham.