Philanthropy and Civic Organizations
Manoogian contributed generously to charitable organizations and educational institutions, especially to the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). In recognition, he was voted Life President in 1970 and Honorary Life President in 1989. Manoogian was also active in the Knights of Vartan; in 1940 he was elected its Avak Sparapet (National Commander).
In 1968 he established the AGBU Alex and Marie Manoogian Cultural Fund. The fund, seeded with a $1 million endowment, is devoted to the publication and translation of Armenian scholarly and literary works, and Armenian cultural material worldwide.
Through the AGBU, the Manoogians funded schools for ethnic Armenians in Southfield, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sydney, Australia; Beirut, Lebanon; Zahle, Lebanon; Egypt; Tehran, Iran; Montreal, Quebec; Toronto, Ontario; and Montevideo, Uruguay (all are named for the Manoogian family). Manoogian also funded numerous Armenian churches, cultural centers, university chairs for Armenian studies and museums worldwide. He donated generously to Wayne State University in Detroit.
Marie Manoogian died in 1993, and Alex in 1996. They were first interred in Detroit, Michigan. In 2007 they were reinterred with state honors in Armenia (see below).
Read more about this topic: Alex Manoogian
Famous quotes containing the words philanthropy and/or civic:
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)