John Vartan

In early 1989, Vartan was diagnosed with throat cancer. Even though his cancer made it difficult for him to talk and to be understood at times, he continued with his business expansion and civic leadership. On November 22, 2004, the Management announced that the Vartan family would be taking over the operations of the "Vartan Group". Vartan died on December 15, 2004, after his 15-year battle with throat cancer. He is survived by his wife, Maral, his four children, his three brothers, and his sister.

After the Harrisburg campus of Widener University School of Law opened in 1989, Vartan donated the surrounding land to the campus, including an even more luxurious home that he had built to replace his first home. After the establishment of the law school, Widener University added nursing and social work programs to the campus.

Vartan's faith in the American legal process made him unusually responsive to suggestions that Harrisburg needed a new law school. Approached by Widener University for help in 1986 because of his dual role as a developer and the then-largest individual contributor to Penn State University, he surprised the university and other law school advocates by donating land, including his own spacious home, and cash of nearly $2 million, and by offering financial loans.

Vartan grew up in the Armenian village of Anjar in Lebanon, also known as Haoush Mousa. After obtaining an engineering degree from Michigan Technological University, and a master's degree from Pennsylvania State University, he started working for Gannett Fleming, Inc. in the early 1970s. He subsequently started his own firms which include:

Vartan's crowning achievement was perhaps his re-establishment of Harrisburg's venerable "Tuesday Club", founded by state Senator Harvey Taylor, in the 1950s. To help subsidize the building, he constructed the first permanent headquarters for the "Tuesday Club" at his own expense. He also established a high quality restaurant, Parev, decorated with distinctive Armenian art, to provide another high quality restaurant for Harrisburg. The "Tuesday Club" soon became a mecca for Pennsylvania's political, business, media and civic leaders.

John Vartan (February 8, 1945 – December 15, 2004) was an American entrepreneur and a noted educational philanthropist in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area where he lived.