Agganis Foundation now in its 54th year

Michael H. Shanahan grew up on Hudson Street in Lynn and cut through Pine Grove Cemetery every time he walked to the old North Shore Arena to play hockey.”I used to pass Harry Agganis’ grave every time I walked down to the rink,” Shanahan says.Attorney Stephen L. Smith played in the Agganis Football Classic when he was a senior at Lynn Classical, and on the night of the game, he looked around Manning Bowl and saw plenty of adults scurrying around, collecting tickets, selling programs and food and officiating.”But it didn’t dawn on me until much later that there were an awful lot of people, with maybe a lot of better things to do, who were volunteering their services so that kids like me could feel better about themselves,” said Smith.Peter C. Pedro Jr. also played in the football game as a senior at Classical. “There’s a tremendous amount of connectivity and nostalgia involved,” he says.The Agganis Foundation is in its 54th year. It celebrates the legacy of Lynn’s best-ever athlete these days by sponsoring a series of high school all-star games, the last of which, the 48th Football Classic, gets under way tonight at 7 p.m. at Manning Field.But the foundation is more than sports events, even if the umbrella that engulfs it is very much rooted in athletics. Over the course of its lifetime, it has awarded more than $1.2 million ($1,253,525) in scholarship money to 798 student athletes from the North Shore and Boston areas. And it shows no signs of slowing down.Agganis’ story is a true Greek Tragedy. “The Golden Greek” was a standout athlete at Lynn Classical and Boston University who later played for the Red Sox. He died in 1955 of a pulmonary embolism after a brief illness, and upon his death, The Item and the Red Sox, at the behest of attorney Charles Demakis, established the foundation.There are many reasons the foundation remains as viable as it is. Its first chairman, Harold O. Zimman, nurtured the foundation for 37 years, from a vision to the point where it had an endowment of $223,000 and awarded $455,000 in scholarships to 566 students. Edward M. (Ted) Grant, who is now president of the foundation, succeeded Zimman as chairman in 1992 and has overseen a growth in the endowment to more than $1 million and scholarships awarded to $1.25 million.Grant, the principal of Grant Communications Group, credits Thomas L. Demakes, the president of Old Neighborhood Foods, who spearheaded a million-dollar capital campaign in conjunction with the foundation’s 50th anniversary in 2005; and the support of the Yawkey Foundation, which has donated more than $250,000 in the last 10 years.The backbone of the foundation, however, has always been volunteerism.”Without the many people who, year after year, volunteer their time and services to these games, the foundation wouldn’t be as effective as it is,” says attorney Thomas C. Demakis, son of Charles Demakis and current chairman of the foundation. “They do this out of respect for the ideals of the foundation – academic and athletic achievement – and because they want to give back what was given to them as they grew up in the city.”Giving back is certainly a central theme among the most loyal of volunteers.”That’s how I feel,” said Smith, an elder affairs lawyer and foundation trustee. “And I’d say that all the foundation’s volunteers are looking for a way to give something back.”Being a foundation trustee means providing leadership and raising funds, but it also means grunt work: running the raffle for Red Sox tickets, as Smith did on the morning of the Agganis awards breakfast; and it also means cooking up sausages and hot dogs, as both trustees Pedro and Shanahan – who doubles as the foundation’s treasurer – do during the football game.Shanahan, the managing partner of Egan-Managed Capital, is a native Lynner who is well versed in the Agganis legend, and, to him, “handing out those (scholarship) checks to the first-time recipients on the morning of the breakfast, and mailing those checks to