When we remember Marcus Takach (BSBA ’06, Accounting; MBA ’07), we have to distinguish between his “heart” and his “cardiac muscle.” It was the latter that suddenly failed him at mile marker 10 of the Route 66 Half Marathon on November 21, 2010. It was the former that, during the time he was here, made the University of Tulsa alumnus an extraordinary achiever, colleague and friend.
Passionately devoted to fitness, he was a runner, weightlifter and third-degree black belt in taekwondo. He attended overnight martial arts workshops that included stadium stairs at 4 a.m. He coached a friend through 50 pounds of weight loss and into good health.
He also was an accomplished young professional – an MBA and CPA who served as an admired senior auditor at Ernst and Young, where he worked long hours and supervised a team of about 10 people – impressive responsibilities for a young man of 27.
As a student in TU’s rigorous five-year joint bachelors and MBA program, Takach distinguished himself as a talented scholar and outstanding leader. He minored in sociology, held a part-time job as customer service manager at Reasor’s grocery, and highly successful internships with Dollar-Thrifty Automotive Group and Matrix Service Company. He also served as vice president of the Beta Alpha Psi student accounting organization. In that role, he organized a high-profile speaker series and energized BAP’s “Meet the Firms” event – an informal get-together for companies and aspiring student employees. During his term, BAP also earned TU’s Finest Organization honors based on a review of more than 200 campus organizations. His peers named him Officer of the Year.
It would be misguided, however, to take Takach’s many achievements as evidence of a hard-edged, “type A” personality. Beneath his remarkable focus, he possessed a gentle and gracious spirit that was, by many accounts, his deepest and most endearing gift. He loved nature and music, wrote often in his journal, and read a wide range of material, from the quirkily insightful book Freakonomics to the irreverent fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. He collected Buddha figures and tattoos: a brambling bird, the Eye of Horus, the State of Oklahoma with a heart over Tulsa.
His ease of being in the world showed itself through constant hospitality. At 23, he bought a midtown Tulsa home, which was always open to friends – even to those needing to stay indefinitely, and especially to those in trouble. He was proud enough of his Hungarian heritage to want to cook them Chicken Paprikás, and enough of a young bachelor to need to call Mom for help with the recipe.
At his job at Ernst & Young, he was an outstanding team builder, giving away his knowledge to make others better, caring deeply and doing whatever he could to make the work pleasant. Once, in the middle of a grueling 12-hour auditing session, he stopped everyone for a reinvigorating game of trashcan basketball. He had packed a candy bar for the winner.
Another time, while playing Ultimate Frisbee at the park, Takach met a young man who was distraught over visa troubles that would soon force his return to Vietnam. Where most would listen sympathetically then move on, Takach took up the man’s cause and enlisted the help of the Ernst and Young Human Resources department. They resolved the man’s status, allowing him to remain in the U.S.
Despite long hours at work and an already-active social life, Takach made time for his alma mater. As a season ticket holder, he attended TU football and basketball games almost religiously. He bought a TU license plate for his car. He also loved music and was always up for a road trip to catch an act or a traveling festival (though, being an accountant, he would first schedule all the driving shifts and calculate the cost sharing). Among his belongings, his parents Nick and Lilla found two boxes brimming with ticket stubs from concerts, movies, the ballet. He saved them all, along with his entry numbers from the many benefit runs and walks he had entered.
Takach’s travels ranged far; in 2002, he and friend Stephen Miska went to Hungary, then on to Poland to meet their respective families in the old country. During the spring that would be his last, Takach and friends took a road trip to California. He and his good friend Ben Wass (BA ’09, Political Science) extended the adventure to Amsterdam. During his last two years, Takach’s travels had increasingly included trips to Austin, Texas, to spend time with Charlotte Huskey, a young environmental scientist and tennis player who was more than his girlfriend, though not just yet his fiancée. At the same time, Ben Wass dated Charlotte’s sister, Sarah (Huskey) Wass (BA ’09, MA ’11). (Ben and Sarah were married at Sharp Chapel in August 2012.)
In memory of this lifelong Tulsan and proud alumnus, his family, friends and colleagues established two endowed scholarship funds in the Collins College of Business: the Marcus Geza Takach Memorial MBA Scholarship Endowment and the Marcus Geza Takach Memorial Accounting Scholarship Endowment Fund. The first fund, fortified by matching funds through the Collins-Helmerich Challenge, provides support to MBA students. The second brings assistance to full-time undergraduates enrolled as accounting majors; half of these scholarships are based on merit, half on need.
The University and the Collins College of Business are forever grateful for these remembrances of a vital, intelligent and caring man who was gone too soon. Those fortunate enough to have known Marcus Takach have received rare firsthand mentoring in how to live with passion, curiosity and a beautifully open heart. May the lesson of his life inspire those who benefit from the lasting assets endowed in his name.
