Stories
Stories
Leading to Salvation
Dan Morrell: Bob Ryan (MBA 1970) was born in Detroit, the first in his family to graduate from college. His Dad was a Chrysler factory worker whose schooling ended in fifth grade, his Mom a homemaker. But they instilled in their son a deep appreciation for education, one that took Ryan through his studies at Wayne State University and into the PhD program in engineering at Cornell. It was a path that ensured a secure future, but Ryan didn’t love the work. Rather than face a life of regret, he acted on his fascination with business to apply to HBS, launching a career that would include executive roles at McKinsey, Citibank, and Union Texas Petroleum, as well as board service for General Mills, Hewlett-Packard, Stanley Black & Decker, and UnitedHealth. From 1993 until his retirement in 2005, Ryan served as senior vice president and CFO of Medtronic, overseeing a number of acquisitions and sales at the medical device company and broadening its reach to include a more global investor base.
In this special edition of Skydeck honoring recipients of the Alumni Achievement Award, Associate Editor Julia Hanna talks to Ryan about how his expertise recently found another, unexpected outlet when he was called on to help save a small business that helped a community cope with its grief and honor their dead for over 50 years.

Photo by Susan Young
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NEWS CLIP: Funeral homes are often linked to the end of life.
April Estes: I wish my husband was here.
But this celebration marks the beginning of a new chapter for Estes Funeral Home and Cremation Services. Sunday, April Estes and members of her family showcase their new state-of-the-art facility in north Minneapolis.
Julia Hanna: In October 2018, Estes Funeral Chapel and Cremation Services cut the ribbon on its new, modern complex at the corner of Penn and Plymouth Avenues in the predominantly Black neighborhood of North Minneapolis. It was a high point in a journey that began five years earlier, following the death of founder Richard Estes. At the start of that journey, when Bob Ryan first got involved, the business had been neglected.
Estes Funeral Chapel, located at the corner of Penn and Plymouth Avenues in North Minneapolis, is easily accessible by light rail. "Rather than looking at this building as something negative or sad, I wanted to inspire the people who interacted with it...I wanted to take the chapel and make it a public space."
Bob Ryan: The funeral home was in a very rundown building. If you segment the African American market, you had people who couldn’t really afford to pay for a nice funeral. And then you had people who really could. Well, the ones who could, had left them. And they were left with all of the smaller, far less profitable business. The woman who owned it, her husband was a founder of it. He was a mortician and it was, I think, the oldest African American business in the twin cities. He had severe diabetes. He was on dialysis. He had passed away. His wife wanted to keep his legacy alive. It was very important to her. And so she actually mortgaged her house and put all that money in the funeral chapel. She owed the IRS a lot of money. Her life was in very, very rough shape.
AE: We were behind in our taxes, everything.
JH: Mrs. April Estes is the widow of Richard Estes. He started his business to serve and counsel African American families who had been turned away from white funeral parlors and needed help burying their dead.
AE: We’ve been the only Black funeral chapel in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1962. My husband was such a nice person. People would come in and say, Mr. Estes, my mama just died and I don’t know what to do. We don’t have no insurance and we don’t have no graves or anything like that. In the area that we’re in, it’s poverty. And my husband buried people who did not have money to be buried. We bought graves and everything. So that’s the way my husband was.
JH: After her husband passed away, April turned to the community for advice on how to keep it going.
AE: So Bob’s wife, Sharon and I, belong to a women’s organization here in Minneapolis. We call ourselves “the Girlfriends.” The Girlfriends started back in 1965 by two ladies, two African American ladies, that lived in the Bronx in New York. They would visit each other’s house, drinking coffee and all. And then they just decided, well, let’s invite someone else. And that’s the way it grew. Ours is called Minneapolis St. Paul Girlfriends. And, we have 33 women in our chapter and we meet once a month. During one of our meetings after my husband passed, I had to make a decision, what I was going to do with the funeral chapel. And I knew my husband would want me to keep it. And at a meeting one Saturday morning, one of the girlfriends said that girlfriend April has inherited a business and she’s never worked in it. She is trying to decide what to do. And then Sharon, Bob’s wife, she spoke up and said, Bob is retired, he’ll help her.
BR: And I heard about it from my wife. So I wasn’t home. And I came home at the end of their meeting and they tell me, we’ve all talked and we think you should help her figure out what to do with this business. I was close to coming off of my last board, so at least that freed up some time, and it was in north Minneapolis, which is kind of a lower income area, which is dramatically changing today.
AE: So Bob said he looked at it first and he said he didn’t think that he could do anything with it, but the more Bob talked to me and worked with me, Bob told me, he’s saying, I’m going to try to see what I can do to help you.
JH: Bob Ryan set in motion a chain of connections that would lead to the chapel’s revitalization, calling on help from a local lawyer, Steve Kaplan, and reaching out to Michael Noonan, a senior planning manager with Hennepin County. He hadn’t spent much time in North Minneapolis, but knew there was a real need for the business in the community, and that there were others he could work with to help put it on solid financial ground.
BR: I called a friend of mine, a guy named Steve Kaplan. Steve is a partner in Fredrickson and Byron, a law firm here. So Steve joined me on this, and as we began working on it, it was looking really bleak for a long time. But I didn’t quite want to let it go. And it turned out, I met a man named Michael Noonan. Michael manages all the buildings for Hennepin County. North Point Health and Wellness is a big health center.
JH: NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center is a medical, dental, mental health, and human services agency in North Minneapolis that operates a large facility on Plymouth Avenue.
BR: The funeral home building was right behind North Point. And so North Point wanted to expand. And so I began to work with Michael Noonan and I said, you know, the cheapest way to expand, which he knew, was to take the funeral home. And because the building was in such terrible repair, just tear it down and extend your building. But from another point of view, the question is, what do you do with the funeral home?
JH: A longtime supporter of education, with fellowships at both HBS and Cornell, Ryan had also devoted time over the years to mentoring students. In talking to Michael Noonan about the fate of Estes, he remembered a conversation he’d had with a Cornell student who had benefited from financial aid.
BR: I was working with a young lady who was going there and her brother was shot on the street in Minneapolis. And Estes was the only funeral home that would bury him. The other funeral homes, just because it was, it was government assisted, just didn’t want to be bothered. And so I told Michael Noonan, I said, but this is a business that’s badly needed here. And at the end, he said, if you will stay with them long enough (because they weren’t very well-managed), if you’ll stay with them long enough, we’ll do it. So what I did is I got MEDA, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, to lend them money to pay their taxes. And they really stuck their neck out because their charter says we don’t lend money to pay taxes. And they did that. Then we worked out an arrangement with the county where they could pay it over a five-year period. And so they did that. Hennepin County spent $6 million and bought a piece of land across the street. They did all the land store remediation, did all sorts of things.
JH: Estes agreed to move across the street to a parcel of land the county acquired, where the county would build a new structure the same size as their former building. In exchange, the county received the former Estes property for the expansion of Northpoint Wellness.
BR: And then when Hennepin County got ready, we found an African American fellow who’s a graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Architecture to design the building. And he designed it. And many of his family members had been buried there. And when you talk to him about this, literally tears come to his eyes. It’s been a labor of love for him. And he said, I don’t want a square box or a rectangle. I want something with lots of light, lots of windows. And he designed an absolutely beautiful building.
JH: A lifelong resident of North Minneapolis, Jamil Ford started Mobilize Design and Architecture in 2010. “I think my experience growing up here made me want to be the change I wanted to see for this community,” Ford told North News in a 2018 interview. Getting involved with the new Estes Funeral Chapel came about easily. Ford knew April Estes, and had already designed buildings in the area, including the Hennepin County Human Services building just down the street.
Jamil Ford: I just so happened to be at another notable individual’s funeral. Mrs. April Estes was at the funeral for his service. And I was assisting her into the car and opened the door for her and was just talking to her. And she said, you know, if we ever consider redesigning our future facility, I want you to get involved. And at the moment it just sort of blew over my head. Didn’t really hold on to it too much. But that was the initial planted seed.
I had started getting involved with some of the master planning of the North Point Health and Wellness Center that was directly adjacent to their property. And so I already knew about the larger scheme of expanding to the intersection, along with the need for Estes moving across the street. My company, Mobilize Design and Architecture, we believe in bringing beauty, dignity, and value to architectural design. I was really looking to have a design that was not only transformational in terms of innovation, creativity, design, but also something that resonates back to the community.
And I knew it had to be something remarkable. This is probably one of the only businesses that had survived since the riots of 1967, on Plymouth Avenue. And so that was very near and dear back to my heart, of knowing that this was a much bigger project than the average architect that would be involved.
JH: With the development and construction of the new site for Estes Funeral Home underway, Bob Ryan realized a shiny new building would not solve the business’s other challenges. He tracked cash flow, collaborated with an employment law firm to iron out personnel issues, and helped Estes secure financing for business improvements. For April Estes, Bob’s activities on behalf of the funeral home were a revelation. A retired nursing professional, she had never really been involved in any of its operations and admitted she didn’t know much about what was needed to sustain it financially.
AE: Bob did everything that he could do. Bob met with all kinds of people. Bob met with us, Bob leaded us, Bob guided us. Bob went to a place called MEDA [Metropolitan Economic Development Association], and MEDA is an organization that helps small businesses to get started and they lend them money and they finance them. Bob went there, talked to those people. Bob got on, went through all our finances.He went around to different banks and, and he went around to different, areas and talked to people about us.
JH: During the development of the new chapel, Bob became a regular fixture on Plymouth Avenue and came to understand firsthand how much the community needed it to succeed.
BR: Many days, I worked in the conference room and people would come in and I remember once going out and there was a young girl, she couldn’t have been more than 18 years old. And she was just in terrible shape. I went over and started talking to her and she told me she just had a baby who died. And when you see people…and sometimes these are people who can’t really afford to pay a lot of money. And so what they’ve done now, and I said, strategically, when you think about your business and where you want to go, first, you have to secure the business that you are here for, or that you are uniquely qualified for. And that is people who can’t afford a big funeral and people where you’ve got government assistance. But then the second step is you’ve got to then look at the broader African American community where people can pay. And what people want… I mean, you’ve got more cremations now than you have burials. And you make more money on a burial, but people will pay for a beautiful chapel. And so then I think that takes me to the third thing. You have people who are not African American. And so they have people just walk in who say, do you bury white people? Because they like the look of the chapel. And if you’re webcasting, if somebody’s in Europe, they can be anywhere, they’re watching it on a TV screen, all they see is the chapel and the services being presented.
JH: Ryan’s learning curve included an education in cultural differences—not only what makes African American services different, but what’s unique to the rituals of other communities in the area.
BR: I learned, for example, in the Hmong community, they believe you should not have more than one dead body in a building at a time. So if you had a Hmong funeral service and you’ve got three bodies, they would make arrangements for two of them to be kept at Estes, because they only want one in the building. With African Americans, they want music that they’re familiar with. People will have food brought in, they will deliver food to the family. It becomes more of a family kind of affair. I think in many ways, the architect who designed the building said, I want the building to be something where you hold a celebration of life.
JF: My charge from an architectural standpoint was to not exceed the previous footprint of the Estes Funeral Chapel.
JH: This is architect Jamil Ford again.
JF: So with that, I had some constraints, but I also knew that the old entrance into the old location, it felt like you were walking into the front door of a suburban, rambler-style home. The ceiling heights were like eight feet tall, and very boxed in, it did not give you this sense of great arrival, you might say. And so, even though it was the same footprint, when you walked through the front entry into the lobby, it really opens up. There’s close to 13-foot tall ceilings that allow for some clerestory windows up above, providing natural light that integrates into that space. And so when you’re in there, you have access to natural light. You have a human scale that really brings you into this space that feels comfortable and inviting.
The entrance of Estes Funeral Chapel. "I was looking to have a design that was transformational in terms of innovation, creativity, and design, but also something that resonated with the community," says Jamil Ford of Mobilize Design and Architecture.
And so as you go through the lobby, you can go to the actual chapels to your right, which it could be a large chapel experience. Or you can have the chapel broken into two different rooms, and that allows for smaller scale, more intimate, services. Directly off of the chapel themselves we also introduced a reflection garden that’s on the west side of the building. And what I really wanted to do was define a building that was more modern, more, aesthetically pleasing that really spoke to a community asset, more so than something that was stagnant or just real dry. And rather than looking at this building as something negative or sad, I wanted to inspire the people that interacted with this building. In fact, I wanted to take the chapel and make it a public space that even if there wasn’t a funeral service, this could be a community asset and add value, not only to the Estes family, but to the community as a whole.
Architect Jamil Ford's reflection garden is a community space for quiet contemplation. It includes a hardy shrub reminiscent of a bonsai tree that can withstand Minnesota winters, as well as steel panels cut with natural leaf patterns that allow light while preserving a sense of privacy.
I understood the historical context of the community and what this quarter meant to African Americans and the Jewish community based on the redlining of many nasty, terrible planning efforts from the city of Minneapolis. But this was an opportunity to really take an African American funeral chapel that was branded just as such and go from being just a normal African American funeral chapel to a great funeral chapel.
NEWS CLIP: The eyes of the world watched as George Floyd was memorialized in three different cities: Minneapolis, Rayford, North Carolina, and Houston, Texas. But it was a funeral chapel from north Minneapolis at the center of it all. George Floyd’s family reached out to Estes Funeral Chapel for help in putting together what would be a world-class celebration of life.
JH: Since the reopening of the new site in 2018, the chapel’s work has taken on a heightened poignancy. Estes held or prepared funeral services for George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and Jamar Clark, all killed by Minneapolis police. With the outrage and unrest in the city at the time, Bob Ryan remembers what it was like when Derek Chauvin was on trial for Floyd’s murder.
BR: Particularly here downtown, it was very stressful because the trial was going on. To give you an idea of how the community loves this building, April Estes is a member of an African American church. And, you know, there was looting and all sorts of things. One of the deacons in her church rides a motorcycle. He brought his whole motorcycle group to the chapel parking lot that night to make sure nothing got damaged. And as the construction was going on, construction guys told me that they left their tools out, that nobody would come and steal them.
AE: People here are just so happy because they have a nice place to go.
JH: For April Estes, Bob’s work has had a profound impact in the community, as well as in her own life.
AE: Only thing I can say is that he’s saved our lives. He saved the people’s lives in North Minneapolis, which I have to keep saying this, that’s where my husband spent all of his time helping poor people. And Bob does the very same thing. He’s out in the community right now. He’s still helping me. We got the most beautiful chapel and it’s all because of Bob. Bob is helping me, making sure that the chapel is done right, the taxes is all caught up, and everything is fine. And I have a beautiful staff. My nephew is a mortician and he is now running the chapel and Bob checks behind all of us.
I tell him, I said, God has sent you to us. Because he knew that we were needed and we needed someone to help us. And we did not have anyone to help us. Oh, excuse me. I get emotional because Bob kept us, you know, my husband, I knew my husband would be unhappy without a funeral chapel, because when he got ready to die, I was asking him, I said, what do you want me to do with the chapel? And he said, keep it if you can because the people need it. But if you can’t, just sell it. And I really didn’t want to sell it because I knew he wouldn’t want me to sell it. And so Bob helped me and I said that he was sent to me by God, because I didn’t know what to do.
JH: With Bob Ryan’s help, Estes Funeral Home has secured its place for the future so it can continue to serve residents of North Minneapolis. In 2019, the year after the new chapel opened, community members turned out to honor the man who started it all with an official sign designating the street in front of the building Richard Estes Avenue.
AE: Bob helped me to get my husband’s name on one of the big signs out there that we have, a street named after my husband. Right there by the chapel.
This episode of Skydeck was edited by Jocelyn Gonzalez from PRX productions. Skydeck is produced by the External Relations Department at Harvard Business School. It is available on iTunes or wherever you get your favorite podcast. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.
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