Minnesota icon Harvey Mackay turns 90 tomorrow, October 24. He has impacted a lot of us with his accomplishments and wisdom, including this writer. Speaking for the masses, “Happy Birthday, Harvey!”
Many know Harvey as the founder of a Minneapolis envelope business, but even more of the world knows him as the author of New York Times best-selling business books and as a syndicated columnist for newspapers including the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I have his books and read his columns but more importantly have memories of the kindness he has directed my way over the decades.
In 1990 a new ownership group booted me from my marketing position with the Minnesota North Stars. A few days later the doorbell rang at home announcing a delivery of balloons, along with an encouraging note from Harvey predicting my next career stop would be a home run.
This millennium there have been invitations to fly on a private jet with Harvey and other friends of his to away University of Minnesota football games. He also remembers my birthday every year and has a warm smile on the few occasions our paths may cross these days.
Doing for others is part of his DNA and the importance of giving are words he lives by. Harvey has made a tradition of annually donning a Santa Claus suit and ringing the bell for the Salvation Army in Minnesota. The weather is often frigid but for three hours he helps raise money for the needy because his dad taught him volunteerism should be a priority for everyone.
Harvey has a world-class network of friends, and he makes it a point to know details about them. PR maven Dave Mona recalled that when Harvey travelled internationally, he found places selling commemorative stamps because he had a customer who collected stamps. “Are you going to end your business relationship with someone who adds to your stamp collection?” Mona asked in admiration.
I first met Harvey when I was sports editor of the University of Minnesota’s student newspaper. In the 1960s boosters could help with recruiting and Harvey jumped in with both feet. Growing up in St. Paul he had loved the Gophers and he attended the University where he played on the golf team for legendary coach Les Bolstad.
Graduating in 1954, Harvey had ambitions to play pro golf but despite his fierce drive to excel he realized that career wasn’t going to take off. At age 26 he founded his envelope company located within about a 60 second drive to the U campus.
Why envelopes? Because everybody needs envelopes and Harvey couldn’t envision a time when the world would not. Today he is chairman of MackayMitchell Envelope Company, a $100 million business. The company has 450 employees and manufactures 25 million envelopes a day.
Several years ago, Harvey sent a PDF of a story I wrote about him for the Minnesota Daily in January of 1968. It was headlined: “When Mackay Speaks, Top Athletes Come Here.” The gesture was another example of Harvey’s thoughtfulness.
Harvey helped convince many football and basketball athletes to make the U their college choice. The list includes the late John Williams who was an All-American tackle on the Gophers’ 1967 Big Ten title team, and 1969 basketball captain Al Nuness who became a vice president at Jostens. “I tell the kids about the great job opportunity here after graduation, the M Club, the law school and things like that,” Harvey said in the article.
In the 1970s I wrote a cover story for Corporate Report magazine with Harvey’s photo in the foreground and a domed stadium in the background. The Twins and Vikings were getting restless about the limited capacity and revenue sources at Met Stadium. Harvey, as president of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, helped lead a drive that eventually turned a domed stadium into the reality of the Metrodome.
The Metrodome opened in 1982 and a couple of years later Twins owner Calvin Griffith could break his lease if not enough tickets were sold. He could then relocate the franchise if he chose to do so. Harvey got an idea and marshalled the help of others in the business community. One day he walked up to the stadium box office and ordered 45,400 tickets to alleviate the problem, according to a 1984 New York Times article.
Several months before that Harvey chased down Arkansas head football coach Lou Holtz, and with U AD Paul Giel in the hospital, convinced Holtz to take the Gophers’ job. Harvey revered Giel who was an All-American golden boy as a Gopher athlete, a star for the ages in football and baseball in the early 1950s who became Minnesota’s athletic director in 1971. (BTW) Tom Brokaw will tell you about riding the train from South Dakota in his youth to watch Giel run and pass the football for the Gophers in Memorial Stadium.
At my request several years ago, Harvey spoke to a club that I belong to and he brought up Giel’s name. “If 100 people walked into a room where Paul Giel was, 100 people wouldn’t like Paul Giel. 100 people would love him.”
Harvey has maintained a connection to Gopher football to this day and he has built a friendship with coach P.J. Fleck. “Happy birthday, Harvey,” Fleck said last week. “Harvey has been very instrumental in…my time here. He always says, ‘I only need 37 seconds.’
“He’s given me some incredible wisdom and perspective in the six years I’ve been here, and he’s become a really good friend to me. He’s been in our locker room…after games, and he’s always just there to be able to talk through some things.”
Fleck said Harvey will ask him what is going on and what he’s thinking about to gauge the coach’s state of mind. “He always has something for that exact way of thinking of the thing that I am going through, and I think that’s what makes him special,” Fleck said. “It’s not just some broad terms, he really breaks it down to what I am doing, what our team is doing and really kind of hits home the message.
“But one thing always sticks out to me is, ’I need 37 seconds.’ …That’s how he gets in the door.”
Harvey has relished challenges all his life. Deep into his adult years he decided to become a superb amateur tennis player and he did by taking lessons and having a dogged pursuit of his goal.
More than 30 years ago Minnesotans scoffed at the idea of Minneapolis hosting the Super Bowl. Mona remembers everyone thought it was a crazy idea to convince NFL powers to come here in the dead of winter, but Harvey said, “We’re going to win this.”
Then he proceeded to sell everyone on all the assets and things this area has to offer. With the efforts of Harvey and many others, Minneapolis won the bid for the 1992 Super Bowl. The city also hosted the 2018 Super Bowl.
Harvey is famous for his Mackay Morals in his columns and books. One of them is: Life is 10 percent how you make it and 90 percent how you take it.
Over the decades Harvey has gotten up off the mat many times. In his birthday email to me in 2021 he wrote about his months of struggles with COVID. Whether it’s illness or a back issue hospitalizing Harvey, he always fights back. He loves life and every second is precious.
My phone calls with him most always include a warning about his time constraints. He describes time management as the most important management of all. It is the one resource we cannot buy or replace. That’s why those in Harvey’s world can expect brief phone calls and sometimes at odd hours of the day and night.
Greg Bailey, Harvey’s right-hand man for all things needed, was asked if there is a curfew on the calls? “That’s gotten better. He used to call pretty much any time but now he doesn’t call before 6:30, 7 in the morning and (after) 11 at night.”
Harvey can view sleep as a waste of time. I remember decades ago when it was a big deal for Americans to visit Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Harvey was part of a business delegation that visited Havana, and he didn’t go to sleep while he was there because he didn’t want to miss anything.
Bailey smiled when a visitor referred to him as Harvey’s do-it-all assistant. “It’s almost like a marriage,” Bailey said. “When he had dinner with my wife, when I was almost hired for the job, he asked, ‘You know this is kind of like a marriage if we get together? My wife turned to him and said, ‘As long as you remember I am his first wife.’ “
Bailey’s life is more exciting than when he was writing annual reports pre-Harvey. He talks about the fun of those Gopher football trips and “rubbing shoulders” with some of the most famous people on the planet including Muhammad Ali. “It’s been 27 plus years working hand-in-hand. Very interesting, that’s for sure.”
Harvey and wife Carol Ann were close friends with Ali and his wife Lonnie. Ali is gone now as is another friend, Larry King. They would have been entertained at a mega birthday bash Harvey is throwing in November in Phoenix. Friends are coming in from all over for a celebration weekend that includes an Elton John concert November 11 at Chase Field. Harvey will also celebrate tomorrow night with a smaller gathering at an Arizona restaurant.
Before Harvey ever bonded with Ali, he did his homework and learned the heavyweight boxing champion—sometimes referred to as the most famous person in the world—loved magic and performed tricks. Well, guess who taught himself magic to make an impression?
Harvey can also play tricks on his friends. He shared a story awhile back about Ali and King that is a favorite. “Larry loved boxing and Muhammad Ali,” Harvey wrote via email. “He once wrote in his column in USA Today that meeting Muhammad was ‘the biggest thrill in my life … I couldn’t sleep last night … chills running up and down my spine.’
“One night I was having dinner with Larry in New York, and I brought Muhammad with me as a surprise. Suddenly a woman came up and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Mackay, I’ve read all your books … Can I have your autograph?’
“Larry went nuts and said, ‘Don’t you know who this is? This is Muhammad Ali. Don’t you want his autograph?’
“I looked at Larry and said you bit it hook, line and sinker. I paid her $50 an hour to come up and ask for my autograph.
“We were still laughing about that years later. But the point is don’t ever be boring. Don’t be predictable. Show some creativity with your friends and have some fun.”
Mona and his wife Linda will be part of the group that will be on the receiving end of that creativity and fun next month for the birthday extravaganza in Phoenix. Mona marvels at the life Harvey has led and the vibrancy he still possesses.
“He is a lifetime learner. It’s amazing as he approaches 90. …He is one of the most curious people I’ve ever met.”
That’s Harvey. He will find something that intrigues him and off he goes.
“He’s never allowed himself to go stale,” Mona said. “Constantly looking for new mountains to climb, new things to master. …Quality golfer who became a world-class tennis player. How often does something like that happen? But he has always kept himself in good shape and he has remained both physically and mentally active, and he loves a challenge. Because if he hears someone is (an) underdog he wants to get involved.”
Oh, and BTW, earlier this month Harvey came out with a new book: Harvey Mackay’s ABCs of Success. It’s a busy fall for Harvey—just the way he likes it.
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