Dick Parsons, the kid from Queens who grew up to a major player in the corporate, cultural, philanthropic and political worlds, died of cancer on Thursday at age 76. A towering figure (and not just because he stood 6 foot 4), Dick gave back so much to his hometown it’s hard to list all of his great deeds.
He ran a lot of important institutions, from Dime Savings Bank to Time Warner to Citigroup to CBS to even the L.A. Clippers, but it was his help in the rescue of the fabled Apollo Theatre that was of special distinction, preserving and expanding the legendary 125th St. home of so much of America’s Black artistic creativity.
As a New Yorker, an American and a Black man, that was very important to Parsons, who raised $100 million in nearly two decades as chairman of the Apollo before he stepped down four years ago, becoming chairman emeritus.
Dick was also right on so many issues, from seeing decades ago Rudy Giuliani’s character fatal flaws to the need to maintain merit as the sole admission factor for the specialized high schools.
Up out of John Adams High School in Ozone Park, Parsons found his way to Albany Law School after college in Hawaii. He was a top student and top performer on the bar exam and ended up working for Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, becoming a Rockefeller Republican. He followed Rocky to D.C. when the governor was tapped to be vice president, working in the Ford White House.
There he befriended Giuliani, then at the Justice Department, and when the Democrats won in 1976, they both joined the same law firm back here in New York.
As Parsons rose in business circles, he joined the boards of museums and civil groups and government panels, usually as the chairman. He was Giuliani’s chairman of the city Economic Development Corp. until he quit in disgust in 1996 when the mayor was wrongly using government power to hammer Time Warner then in a commercial dispute over carrying the new Fox News Channel on its cable system.
Parsons saw another, terrible side of his old friend that the rest of the world wouldn’t see until a few years ago.
When this page exposed the scandal at the Apollo in 1998, how a complacent and weak board dominated by local Harlem pols had left the theater literally falling apart with an empty bank account and an empty stage, the state attorney general brought in Parsons to clean up it. We were gratified by the action and most importantly, the Apollo was saved.
We last saw Dick in March, chatting with him during the opening for the new performing arts stages at the Victoria Theater, the once defunct movie house next to the Apollo which was first envisioned for an Apollo expansion in 2000. It took a long time, but it happened.
And just last week the Apollo became the first non-human to be a Kennedy Center Honoree, with the Tree of Hope being brought to D.C. for the festivities.
In the years since its revitalization under Parsons, the Apollo has been fully restored and has a very busy stage, having even hosted presidential debates. Mayor Adams will make his state of the city speech from the Apollo next week.
And without Dick Parsons, the Apollo might have been lost.