Researching John Mack

Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Mack attended the Juilliard School of Music, studying oboe with Harold Gomberg and Bruno Labate and then at the Curtis Institute of Music with Marcel Tabuteau, the longtime principal oboe of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

His first professional experience was with the Sadler Wells Ballet's American tour in 1951-1952. Afterwards he was appointed principal oboist of the New Orleans Symphony, taught briefly at Louisiana State University, and then played with the National Symphony Orchestra from 1963-1965. He was also principal oboist at the Casals Festivals in Prades and Perpignan, France.

Mack was appointed by George Szell as principal oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1965, succeeding Marc Lifschey, and remained there playing under Szell and his successors Lorin Maazel and Christoph von Dohnanyi until 2001 when he retired.

"Teaching," Mack once said, "is close to a sacred duty." He was the Chairman of Oboe Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and served on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music in New York and Hartt School in Hartford. He also taught at the John Mack Oboe Camp, a yearly summer event established by Mack's student and former principal oboe of the New York Philharmonic, Joseph Robinson, in Little Switzerland, North Carolina.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Oboe Concerto was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra to honor his 25th anniversary with the orchestra and he performed the world premiere.

John Mack died in Cleveland, Ohio of brain cancer at the age of 78.

Mack was the son of a farmer and educated in the public schools of Indiana County, Pennsylvania and at a business college in Johnstown. "Seph" Mack began his career as a stock room clerk at McCrory Stores in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which was owned by his cousin, J. G. McCory. By 1908, Mack had become general manager.

In 1911, he and another employee, Walter C. Shaw, resigned from McCrory and purchased G.C. Murphy Co., McKeesport, Pennsylvania, which owned about a dozen “five and dime” stores near Pittsburgh but which had begun to fail after the premature death of its founder in 1909. Mack became president and chairman of the board in 1912, and after some years of struggle turned the failing company around. The Murphy Company improved its position during the Great Depression, and from 1929 to 1934, sales increased from $15.7 million to $28 million. By 1934, there were 181 Murphy Co. stores in eleven states and Washington, D.C. At one point, Murphy Company was the third-largest variety-store chain in the country.

Employee benefits included free life insurance, two weeks paid vacation, and Christmas bonuses of up to $15 in gold. Only a few Murphy stores were organized by unions, "partially because of intense antiunion campaigns mounted by management, but, more importantly, because many of G. C. Murphy's twenty-three thousand employees didn't feel the need for protection from a company they viewed as benevolent and even generous."

Mack enjoyed maintaining and enlarging his family farm, Old Home Manor, and frequently spent his weekends tending show horses and Black Angus cattle. But he that to make money in a community meant to "serve its community." Mack shortly became a philanthropist and community booster. He donated the Ralph Gibson McGill Library to Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. He bought local homes in disrepair, fixed them, and rented them out. He set up a fund for the upkeep of the local cemetery, established a trust fund to care for indigent hospital patients, and gave the hospital $115,000 to build a maternity wing in memory of his parents. He also stocked some of his own with deer and buffalo. J. S. Mack Community Park in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the central gathering place of the town, continues to operate with funds from the J. S. Mack Foundation.

A devout Presbyterian who decorated the main assembly room of the Murphy Company with Bible verses, Mack first met Bob Jones, Sr., founder of Bob Jones College (now Bob Jones University) while serving on the organizing committee for a 1927 revival campaign in McKeesport. Mack was impressed with Jones and told him that he planned to put his “shoulder to the wheel and help you in a big way." Shortly before his death, Mack went so far as to tell Jones to "construct your buildings and send me the bill." Bob Jones College awarded Mack an honorary degree and named the library in his honor. A women’s residence hall in Greenville, South Carolina is named for his wife.

Although Mack was only 60 in 1940, his health gave way, and he died after a stroke on September 27. Four colleges sent their choirs, and Bob Jones preached the funeral.

Born in Liverpool as Jacob David Mack, he grew up in Wrexham before becoming a life assurance agent in Liverpool. Mack became active in the National Amalgamated Union of Life Assurance Workers, then began working for the Labour Party as a lecturer. In 1928, he was elected to Liverpool City Council, serving until 1946.

Mack unsuccessfully contested the Wallasey constituency at the 1929 general election and at the 1931 election. He did not contest the 1935 general election, but in 1942 he was elected unopposed at a by-election on 11th March in the Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency. The seat had been vacated when the sitting Labour MP Josiah Wedgwood was elevated to the peerage.

Mack represented the constituency until he stood down at the 1951 general election.

Mack was active in the Liverpool branch of Poale Zion, and served as a vice-president of the Committee for a Jewish Army, which led to the formation of the Jewish Brigade. In 1946, he travelled to Bulgaria and Romania to ask their new governments to assist surviving Jews in those countries.