Giving is the Best Way of Living: Harry and Rose Papp


Roy Papp and his wife Marilyn made a decision in 1977 to relocate to Phoenix, sight unseen, and Phoenix has reaped the rewards of that decision every day since. Papp, who later founded the financial firm L. Roy Papp & Associates, had just finished a stint as U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank in the Philippines (a position that came via a recommendation from Donald Rumsfeld, then chief of staff for President Gerald Ford).
They hit the desert ground running. Roy and Marilyn, with their son Harry and his wife Rose, embraced the Valley of the Sun and went on to become business leaders and generous benefactors to Arizona arts and culture. Roy and Marilyn have passed – Roy in 2011 and Marilyn last March – but their contributions to the community will live on.
On March 4 the Papp family will be honored as part of the 2017 slate of Historymakers, a program which recognizes outstanding Arizonans who have distinguished themselves with notable achievements in the arts, athletics, communications, education, entertainment, community service and philanthropy.
The Papp family will be feted along with others at the 12th Historymakers Gala, a Historical League fundraiser held every two to three years to honor the next class of chosen Historymakers. The Historical League, which runs the Historymakers program, has recognized and honored outstanding Arizonans since 1992.
Through biographies, portraits, oral histories, photos and memorabilia, the life stories of the Papps and other Historymakers become an important part of the Arizona Historical Society Museum through archives and exhibits for the Historymakers exhibit and the Historymakers Hall.
The Papps will join an impressive list of diverse honorees such as Sandra Day O’Connor, Eddie Basha, Bil Keane, Erma Bombeck, Barry Goldwater, Govs. Raul Castro and Rose Mofford, among many others.
“My mom, in particular, was really touched by this,” Harry Papp said. “It was important to both my parents in that they wanted to pass on their values and be good to the community and be helpful and supportive and try to do what you can. Rose and I have always done that. We’ve wanted our kids to do that. So it’s nice to be honored.”
For us it’s not necessary,” he continued, “but my mom got a real kick out of it. Roy had passed away and she learned about this about three months before she passed away and she said, ‘Well I might not even be there who knows.’ I said that we hope you are but if you’re not at least you’re being honored, the family’s being honored. So for us, it’s nice, it’s unnecessary for us, but it’s a nice remembrance for my mom and my dad.”
Rose said she is “flattered and flustered” by the honor. “Because you don’t do these things in order to be honored, we do them because we enjoy it,” she said.
To get an understanding of why Harry and Rose Papp give so much to their community requires an awareness of what motivates humans to give. That comes down to the belief – which the Papps said they share – that giving is motivated by man’s deeply held need to find meaning in life.
For most people, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “meaning is deeply intertwined with community connections (defining community as narrowly as family and as broadly as the full community of life). Humans want to feel a sense of connection and a sense of purpose to life. Giving (time, money, and energy) is a central way that we strive to find meaning.”
For Harry and Rose, their free time is spent doing mostly that – giving. One of their favorite vehicles is bringing rare and beautiful art to Phoenix, a cause started by Roy and Marilyn that continues with Harry and Rose.
Roy’s time spent in the Philippines as U.S. ambassador would shape their interest in art (it was Marilyn’s college major) and lead them to buy Chinese paintings, which became more and more popular as China ascended. They built one of the world’s finest collections of Chinese art and are trying to arrange to give several of these rare and significant works to the Phoenix Art Museum.
“They had the resources and they had the benefit of real world class expertise in which ones to buy and that all came together and they were able to assemble this fabulous collection of classical Chinese paintings,” Harry said.
If the money hadn’t been available it wouldn’t have worked. If the objects weren’t available it wouldn’t have worked. And if they didn’t have the expertise of friends, they wouldn’t have been confident enough to buy these things. So, it was a three-legged stool. All of them had to be present to make it work and by God it worked.”
In addition to the Phoenix Art Museum, the family’s generosity has benefited many Arizona organizations, including the Phoenix Zoo, the Desert Botanical Garden, Arizona State University, Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera and Ballet Arizona.
Harry’s day job is overseeing the private client business at the financial firm in his father’s name. The list of organizations he devotes time and resources to is staggering, and consists of the following:
•Board of Directors of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, serving as past Chair.
•Trustee and has served as a Director/Trustee of the Phoenix Zoo for 32 years.
•Board of Directors and Board of Trustees of the Arizona State University Foundation and past chair of the Investment Committee.
•Board Member and Treasurer of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.
•Board of Community Health Charities of Arizona, serving as Treasurer, and previously served on the national board for 15 years.
•Planned Giving Committee for the Desert Botanical Garden and the Phoenix Art Museum.
•President of the Arizona Five Arts Circle.
Rose, who joined L. Roy Papp & Associates in 1981, is Research Director and has over three decades of experience in security and financial analysis, also is fully immersed in causes in the following roles:
•Board of Directors of the Flinn Foundation, serving as Treasurer and Chair of the Investment Committee.
•Board of Trustees of the Phoenix Art Museum, serving as Vice Chair.
•Board of Trustees of the Desert Botanical Garden, serving as Chair of the Audit Committee.
•Arizona Women’s Forum and ASU Foundation’s Women & Philanthropy Program.
The Papps deep involvement in community organizations and causes gives them plenty to talk about at home. “It’s work but it’s different than our daytime work,” Harry said. “It’s kind of our hobby. Instead of playing golf we like to go hang out at these not-for-profits and the skill sets that we have – organizational skills, financial, business – these are things that are incredibly useful to not-for-profits because when I started at the zoo they needed somebody to figure out how to price stuff in the gift shop and how to run the membership.”
“We go home (Harry does the cooking) and we’ll talk about either work or one of the groups while he cooks,” Rose said. “So yes it’s a lot but we share it, we enjoy it. We do enjoy and really love that feeling of community. And that is important to us.”
Harry was introduced to the arts at a young age. In Chicago, arts and culture were there for the taking, all around him. “My parents would ask us, where do you want to go this weekend? The zoo? I love the zoo,” he said. “Want to go to the Field Museum? Want to go to the Art Institute of Chicago or the Modern Art Museum? What do you want to do? Which museum should we go to? Which cultural institution? And there were great, great opportunities.”
The Papps want to see Phoenix have the same wealth of offerings like older cities.
“When you look around Phoenix, Arizona it’s a relatively new community and people today better be doing the things that the people in Boston, in Cleveland, in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia were doing 200 or 300 years ago that have ended up causing these great institutions to be available and have these terrific endowments,” Harry said, noting that organizations in Phoenix lack such endowments because it’s a relatively new community.
“The ability to move the needle in this community is different than it is in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Cleveland or Pittsburgh or New York,” he added.
The Papps, it’s fair to say, with their decades of service and contributions to institutions, have moved Phoenix’s proverbial needle.

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