Longtime Boys & Girls Clubs Leader and Former Stearns County Commissioner Mark Sakry Dies at 73

(KNSI) – Mark Sakry, a fixture in Central Minnesota civic life for more than four decades, has died.

The longtime executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota, former Stearns County Commissioner, and founder of Quarry Park passed away Sunday morning at the age of 73. He had been living with Parkinson’s disease.

According to Aimee Minnerath, Vice President of Donor Engagement & Communications for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota, Sakry began as a volunteer in 1979 and went on to lead the organization through decades of transformational growth. When he started, the Club operated out of a converted dairy building on the east side of St. Cloud and served about 70 youth per day.

Today, the organization serves more than 1,500 young people in grades K-12 daily. Minnerath said Sakry’s legacy is measured “in the thousands of lives changed because a caring adult believed in them.”

Sakry served as executive director from 1979 to 1984 and again from 1993 to 2018. He was instrumental in raising more than $10 million to build three new Boys & Girls Clubs in St. Cloud in less than 15 years.

The $800,000 Roosevelt Club opened in December of 1994, followed by the $3.7 million Southside Boys & Girls Club in January of 2001. A new Eastside Club opened in Raymond Park in December of 2008. The Roosevelt Club was expanded in 2013 to include a commercial kitchen, kids’ café and teen center, and a gym addition was completed in November of 2015 after a 2014 lightning fire destroyed the neighboring Roosevelt Early Childhood Education Center.

Sakry also oversaw the growth of the KIDSTOP school-aged child care program, which expanded from two pilot sites in 1985 to 15 locations across Central Minnesota. He was instrumental in bringing arts programming to the Club, partnering with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the Wallace Foundation in 2014 to develop the Youth Arts Initiative.

His work earned him national recognition, including Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s 2010 Executive of the Year for the Midwest Region and the prestigious Heart and Soul Award from Boys & Girls Clubs of America in 2015.

He served as a Stearns County Commissioner for 22 years from 1989 to 2010, sat on the District 742 School Board for three years prior to that, and served as Recreation Superintendent for the City of St. Cloud from 1984 to 1991. In 2010, his peers voted him one of St. Cloud’s three most influential people.

Sakry is known as the founder of Quarry Park and authored the book “Quarry Quest: The History of Stearns County Quarry Park and Nature Preserve.”

A 1971 graduate of Cathedral High School and a 1978 cum laude graduate of St. John’s University, Sakry is survived by his wife Diane, daughter Dionne, son Brent, and grandchildren Summer and Noah.

Visitation will be held from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 11th at Daniel Funeral Home in St. Cloud, with a time of sharing at 6:30 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12th at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in St. Cloud, with visitation also held one hour prior to the service.

The family is asking that memorial donations be made to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota in Mark Sakry’s honor.

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