Beating the odds
Homewood native overcomes impoverished youth to succeed in business
One in a series
The Homewood community in Pittsburgh’s East End was overlooked for city recovery funding in the five years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 led to rioting — a place where the neighborhood fabric was ripped by heroin and gangs and burned-out storefronts, research published in 2012 found.
As a child growing up on the streets of Homewood — Bennett, Kelly, Alsace — Melvin L. Blanks was also overlooked, not experiencing many of the advantages kids in other neighborhoods might have enjoyed. His world was food stamps and the government cheese handouts of the early 1970s.
“When it’s all you know, it’s not tough,” he said. “It’s life.”
His first job: picking up pop bottles around the neighborhood for the nickel return deposit. Later, when he was 8 years old, he sold penny candy behind the counter at Baker’s Dairy on Hamilton Avenue. Store owner William Baker told other children he hired Mr. Blanks because he could count, Mr. Blanks said.
“I was in the streets very, very young,” said Mr. Blanks, now 55 years old and living in Ross with his wife, Tiffanie, 46, and their four children. “From an early age, I wanted to do the best I could to take care of myself. My work ethic came from the need to survive.”
Raised by his mother in a single-parent household along with a brother and two sisters, he beat long odds to graduate from college and to operate a string of businesses. That included a construction company he formed at age 26, MLB Real Estate for his property holdings at age 47 and a home care agency he opened when he was 49.
He’s proof hard work with a little opportunity can have its own payday, regardless of one’s age. Mr. Banks credits his good fortune to his faith.
“God first and then my family,” he said. “Those are the most important things in my life.”
The key to his accomplishments has been the way he treats others, said Highland Park resident
Vernon Simmons, who has known Mr. Blanks for eight years and worked with him on community opioid education efforts and distributing free meals at a Homewood senior high-rise.
The two men, both graduates of historically Black universities, are active in social service programs as part of Phi Beta Sigma, a fraternity founded in 1914 at Howard University.
“He treats everyone as if they matter,” said Mr. Simmons, 56,
who is principal scientist at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin. “When you treat everyone as if they matter, they start believing they do.”
As an adolescent, Mr. Blanks worked in the kitchen at the former Balcony restaurant in Shadyside, which opened in 1980. He also worked occasionally with his dad, a self-employed contractor, hefting bundles of asphalt shingles for roofing jobs. He was street smart and also book smart and athletic in high school, where he played football.
By that time, his family had moved to East Hills, and Mr. Blanks, who always preferred stylish dress, was hired at Herman’s Stylegate Mens Store in the East Hills Shopping Center. He chose to increase his hours at the store over increasing high school football practice.
The choice came down to this: What were the chances of him going pro? he said.
He was a high school senior with an income, nice clothes to wear and little incentive to change when a teacher called him aside.
“Melvin, you have to go to college,” she told him. “Don’t waste your academic abilities. You have good grades.”
There were few people he could turn to for advice: A cousin was the only other person in his family who’d graduated from college. The teacher who counseled him was a graduate of Lincoln University in Chester County, where Mr. Blanks enrolled and later graduated with a business degree.
After commencement, he paid $1,000 for a fix-up rental property in Homewood, which he still owns, then opened a contracting business.
About this time, the getrich-quick lure of Pittsburgh’s inner city streets tempted him, Mr. Blanks said. But it didn’t take long for him to see “everyone around me was dead or going to jail,” he said.
“I understand if you think you have to turn to the streets,” he said. “But there are other opportunities to be successful without the streets.”
Mr. Blanks found those opportunities several years later by drawing a $10,000 bank loan and opening Sharper Images Barbering Salon on the North Side. Later, he added a second hair salon under the same name on Highland Avenue in East Liberty.
He ran the businesses for 10 years before switching gears and opening Lydell’s, a high-end men’s clothing store in Downtown. The name of the business, which carried suits, ties and high-end men’s clothing, was his middle name.
After 15 years, something was missing.
“It was a nice ride. I was making a decent living, but
I wasn’t fulfilled doing it,” he said. A friend suggested home care might offer the rewards that were missing from clothing sales.
He took the advice, and in 2014 — in his late 40s — he opened An Amazing Personal Care Corp., a home care agency with 50 fulland part-time employees serving Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties. Among the first things he did was become a certified nursing assistant, a 120hour program he now requires of all front-line employees.
It was a lesson he learned when he operated the hair salons. Even though he owned two salons, he was not a hair stylist, which meant he was entirely dependent upon his employees for his own livelihood. That was an uncomfortable realization.
Taking the CNA course with the opening of the home care agency was his way of avoiding the mistake again. Moreover, it’s advice he said he would give to entrepreneurs of any age: Love what you do, and, more importantly, know what you do so you’re not wholly dependent on others to make sure things run smoothly.
“If you go into business, make sure it’s something you love,” he said. “And I firmly believe you have to have your own back.”