For the first time in 33 years, there was something missing from the Agganis games last month.
Ted Grant.
Grant, who had been either chairman or president of the Agganis Foundation since 1992 (after chairing the football game beginning in 1987) turned the keys over to Andrew Demakes in time for the implementation of Agganis Week 2019.
There are a couple of things you have to know from the outset. One is that Harry Agganis was Lynn’s best athlete ever — and that’s not just my opinion, but backed up by an end-of-the-century Item poll consisting of experts who saw him play. The second is that while the foundation honors an elite athlete, it equally celebrates and rewards academic accomplishment.
Grant’s a Lynn guy, just like I am. He grew up hearing the same stories about the same people that I heard. Even though we were raised in different sections of the city (he Nahant Place; me on the Lynn-Saugus line) the legends were one and the same. And the biggest legend of them all was Aristotle George Agganis.
Putting together teams has long been Grant’s M.O. Most of us who work with him (he is the publisher and president of Essex Media Group [EMG], which owns The Item) are sick of hearing how he learned more about management from his St. Mary’s High baseball coach, Bob Guidi, than any BC professor — and I like Guidi — but whatever Guidi taught him seems to have taken.
Grant in 1990 convened a few heavy hitters from the Lynn business community and they recruited a few dozen others to create the Lynn Business Partnership (LBP) — which is still facilitating positive change in the city.
In 1995, he founded a public relations company, Grant Communications Consulting Group (GCCG), also still flourishing. At GCCG, he created “The Educator,” an award-winning publication devoted to public-school systems that went nationwide.
In all cases, he says, it was about forming the right team.
That was certainly the case with Agganis.
From the time of Agganis’ death in 1955 through the 1980s, its chairman Harold Zimman ran the foundation with a group of ex officio trustees (including, among others, the presidents of BU, the Red Sox, the Bank of Boston, etc.). Upon assuming the chair in ’92, that was the first thing Grant changed. He went local.
After a few phone calls, he came to the conclusion that Lynn Attorney Charles Demakis was the patriarch of the local Greek community. So he asked for a meeting — one that he loves to talk about, describing Demakis as “a little guy behind a massive desk” (and when reminded Demakis was 5-10, he said that only demonstrates how massive was the desk).
“It was like meeting the Wizard of Oz.”
Attorney Demakis, in Grant’s estimation, changed the course of the foundation. He suggested Grant contact his nephew, Tom Demakes of Old Neighborhood Foods, and the late Angie Laskaris (Nandee’s Restaurant in Lynn) and Mike Frangos (Commodore Restaurant in Beverly) to become trustees. When Grant asked why they’d take his call, Demakis replied, “Because I’ll tell them to.” They did. They joined.
That relationship carried on with Charlie’s son Attorney Tom Demakis, who became chairman when Grant became president in a reorganization of the foundation, and who has become a valuable sounding board and Grant’s friend.
Over time, Grant also added the late Attorney Martin C. (Bozie) Goldman; then-Item publisher Peter H. Gamage; Nick Kostan, who’d become superintendent of Lynn schools; Judge Brian Merrick, banker Joe Riley; attorneys Steve Smith and Steve Walsh; the sitting mayors of Lynn; and two guys who were a common denominator in all Grant’s professional endeavors: Tom Iarrobino and Mike Shanahan.
The Agganis Foundation flourished. Under Grant it:
- exploded from $647,180 in scholarships awarded to almost $2 million;
- grew its endowment from $184,411 to $1,275,888;
- expanded the roster of games from football to nine, with baseball, softball, and boys and girls soccer, basketball and lacrosse; and the Agganis Game became Agganis Week — the only such weeklong celebration of high school sports in the commonwealth;
- brought in the Thomas A. Yawkey Foundation, resulting in $500,000 in contributions and the awarding of four 4-year $4,000 scholarships for the past 19 years to Boston-area student-athletes;
- established scholarships in memory of the late Lynn mayor Patrick J. McManus, and the late Item sports editor Edward H. Cahill (funded by Cahill’s son, Ed, an Agganis trustee and also an EMG director), as well as those endowed by Agganis’ grand-nephew Greg and Lynn businessman Jim Baldini (given to students majoring in a STEM subject in college); and
- created the Agganis Hall of Fame, through which the foundation has recognized the good works of 128 community, sports and media members enshrined, with awards in the names of Zimman, Demakis, former FBI agent Paul F. Cavanagh, former Item sportswriter David C. Weidner, and former Lynn athletic director (and longtime football game guru) Dr. Elmo Benedetto.
Grant speaks fondly of his three-plus decades with the Agganis Foundation.
Oddly enough, he never actually watched any of the Agganis games because he was usually too busy running them. But the one time he actually got to see one, a baseball game at Clancy Field at Breed Middle School, he got into a conversation with former Swampscott baseball and football coach Frank DeFelice that resulted in his daughter, Jaclyn Chandler Grant, going to Boston College. Trust me, it’s a great story but one way too long to tell here.
Friendships were solidified during those three decades. Grant views Iarrobino, who chairs the foundation’s scholarship committee, as a mentor, who helped him form the LBP and GCCG.
Paul Halloran was his right hand first at The Item, then at GCCG, and as executive director of the Agganis Games.
Grant can be a dreamer, and it took Shanahan, whose strength is his pragmatism and business acumen, to talk him down and figure out how to pay for whatever visions of grandeur he concocted (including the purchase of this newspaper and its expansion as Essex Media Group [EMG], of which Shanahan is chairman and CEO).
If the mark of a successful stewardship is to see your tenure end with the organization vastly improved from the way it was when you took over, then by any measure you want to discuss, Grant’s time with the Agganis Foundation was a smashing success.
Whether it was growing the LBP, GCCG, EMG, or the Agganis Foundation, for Grant it was a game.
The Agganis Foundation was the real winner.
