St. Paul’s low-key, high-stakes philanthropist, John Nasseff — who started at West Publishing toiling in boxcars and later became its only top executive without a college degree — died at his St. Paul home Wednesday evening, just hours before his 94th birthday.

Nasseff liked to stand at the window of his condominium on the 24th floor of Park Towers in downtown St. Paul, where he could see his hometown laid out before him.

“I can see my entire life from here,” he told the Pioneer Press in 2013. “How many people can do that?”

He could see where he was born on the West Side in 1924, the church where he was baptized and where his Lebanese immigrant parents are buried.

He could see the old Roosevelt School, which he attended until he dropped out in ninth grade to help support the family after his father became ill.

He knew the route from home to school where he would walk with skinny but brainy Sidney Applebaum as a body guard against bullies. (His services paid with bags of candy by the mother of the future Rainbow Foods grocery magnate.)

He could point in the direction of the movie theater he and his brother were in when they watched a news brief about the Battle of Guadalcanal that inspired them to join the Army in 1942.

He could see the roof of the old West Publishing building where he started as a newly-married 22-year-old unloading boxcars. And where he retired 50 years later as a vice president, board member and major stockholder.

When the privately held legal publisher was sold to Thomson Corp. in 1996 for $3.4 billion, Nasseff became a multimillionaire at age 72, with his share of the sale being about $175 million. He spent the next couple of decades finding ways to give it away.

“His passing leaves a hole in our city, our state, our country and world. Many will realize it, some may not. All will feel it,” St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell — who knew Nasseff for decades — wrote on Facebook. “John grew up with a dream of making St. Paul a better place.”

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He also built a dental clinic in his mother’s home village in Lebanon, donated money to orphanages in several countries, helped with the expansion of St. Maron’s (Maronite) Catholic Church in Minneapolis, contributed to the St. Paul police and fire departments, the Mayo Clinic and more.

“He came from very poor, humble background, and just worked his butt off to get to the top. He never forgot the people — he was always connected to the neighborhood. He was always grounded. He supported a lot of things people don’t know about,” Ramsey County Commissioner Rafael Ortega said.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Coming from Lebanon, Nasseff’s father, Betros, was turned away at Ellis Island in 1909 when health inspectors mistakenly diagnosed him with trachoma, an infectious eye disease. From there, he boarded a ship he believed was going to Cuba. Instead, he ended up in Venezuela, and it took seven years before he and Nasseff’s mother, Zmorrod, traveled across Mexico to the Texas border — eventually arriving in St. Paul in 1916.

Nasseff, their sixth son, was born eight years later.

Nasseff remembered being hungry as a child and doubling socks inside his shoes to cover the holes. His mother ironed fabric scraps and sewed them together to peddle, clothe her own children and send to relatives less fortunate in Lebanon.

Many times, the children ate day-old bread and peanut butter for a meal.

“We would sit at the table for dinner,” Nasseff told the Pioneer Press in 2013, “and my mother would say, ‘Look at how God has blessed us. We have this warm house. We have food. We have beds to sleep in.’ She made us feel like we were chosen. And she assumed that you would give what you had to help those with nothing.”

It was his desire for efficiency that helped him climb the corporate ladder at West Publishing, by suggesting ways the company could save money and time. He proposed that his bosses pay him a percentage of the money he saved instead of a wage.

He also invested in the company. When it was sold and he found himself to be a wealthy man, he remembered his mother’s second lesson.

“She said, ‘You look around. If you see people that need things, you help them, and God will reward you,’” he said when he and his wife, Helene Houle, were honored as Outstanding Individual Philanthropists in 2013 by the Minnesota Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. “And she’s right. She said, ‘God sees what you do for others, and he rewards you.’”

CAREFUL GIVER

Nasseff was efficient, even in his generosity. He considered carefully each project and each donation, and usually only contributed if it connected with him on a personal level.

“There were so many gifts that were given anonymously that you knew had come from John,” said former St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. “The organ at the church, the training center at the police department. He had his name on a lot of things, but a lot of times he knew he didn’t have to do that.”

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When he nearly died from a heart attack during a trip to Las Vegas in 1977, Nasseff remembered the physician from United Hospital who left his blackjack game and saved his life.

Years later, Nasseff became the lead donor for a new heart hospital for the United Hospital Foundation.

He has given to many Catholic projects, such as St. Agnes School in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood to which he and his wife contributed more than $10 million for a student activity center. The 2014 gift was called one of the largest single gifts ever to a Catholic school in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Most recently, in 2017, he and his wife donated $100,000 to the city of Eagan to help rebuild and expand its century-old town hall, which was nearly destroyed by arson in 2013.

Why Eagan? When Nasseff was the vice president of engineering and facilities at West Publishing, the company relocated there from St. Paul. Nasseff credited the successful move to Tom Hedges, Eagan’s city administrator at the time.

The 1992 relocation cost downtown St. Paul a major employer and created hard feelings among some city officials.

“The first time I met him was kind of a run-in, we were ticked off they were moving West Publishing to the suburbs,” former St. Paul City Council member Dave Thune recalled. “Oh, my God, he tore me a new one. And I never forgot that, what a tough guy — and you just don’t question his integrity.”

Nasseff did not give to causes he did not believe in, such as politics.

In his twilight years, he gained a reputation of donning a beret and a cape and walking around downtown St. Paul. Nasseff suffered a debilitating stroke in 2016.

He had two sons from his first marriage, John Nasseff Jr. and Arthur Nasseff.

Funeral arrangements for Nasseff, whose death was confirmed by family friends, were pending.

Frederick Melo contributed to this report.