By Andy Serwer

Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King Jr., and all manner of other luminaries have graced Harlem's famed Apollo Theater stage over the years. Thursday, a different sort of legendary figure, Richard Dean Parsons, was honored there with a Celebration of Life ceremony, with a diverse crowd of boldfaced names and ordinary folks alike in attendance.

President of Lazard, Ray McGuire was the emcee and delivered an emotional end-of-service eulogy . Also present were Lauder family members (of the Estée Lauder cosmetics company); former TimeWarner CEO Jef Bewkes; former American Express CEO Ken Chenault; NBA Commissioner Adam Silver; and others such as former Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore; Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times and CNBC; Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty; Ed Lewis, co-founder of Essence; and music executive Sylvia Rhone. Jazz great Wynton Marsalis and his band played a funeral procession that paraded through the theater to conclude the ceremony.

The Apollo is hardly a typical place for a memorial service but Dick, as he was known, was hardly a typical guy. (Plus, he had served as Apollo's board chair.) The former CEO of TimeWarner, Dime Savings Bank, and former chairman of Citigroup and CBS, Parsons specialized in fixing companies that were broke, with some calling him "Captain Emergency." But that doesn't begin to describe his larger-than-life personality.

Not to resort to cliché, but Parsons really was a giant of a man. Barrel-chested and 6'4", Parsons could command a room with his presence, even though he was generally fairly soft-spoken. It was more his intelligence, wit, and unparalleled people skills that drew folks in. The breadth of what he did was striking. People wanted Parsons to lead all kinds of high-profile boards, and sometimes he indulged them, as he did when asked to be on the board of Estée Lauder.

"When I was in my early 30s, I was looking for a lawyer," said Ronald Lauder, son of founder Estée, in a humorous and emotional tribute. "I told friends that the lawyer had to be very smart and Republican." Lauder hired Parsons, who was known to be both. "Dick would later say that was a very limited field," Lauder said. "Dick had an enormous influence on the Lauder family," Lauder continued. "He was the kind of friend we all hope to find in life and was one of the greatest gifts I was ever given."

Parsons also served as co-chair of the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and was chair of the Jazz Foundation of America and chair of the Rockefeller Foundation, the latter of which speaks to a longstanding relationship with that prominent American family. One of Parson's grandfathers had been head groundskeeper at John D. Rockefeller's estate. In Parsons' final year at the University of Albany Law School (where he spent a good deal of time playing bridge), he received an internship with then New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who recognized Parsons' abilities and hired him full time.

"Richard was assigned to the Governor's staff that assisted Rockefeller with his program of going to town meetings throughout the state, where he would give a talk and answer questions from the audience," says Steve Cleary, then manager of the university's bookstore. "One time someone asked a question and the Governor didn't know the answer, so the Governor called on Richard to answer it. Richard later told me he didn't know the answer either. He stood up and answered it."

A number of the speakers during Thursday's service noted that Parsons had a nickname for everyone. Mine was "Mr. Bold Moves," and it wasn't particularly complimentary. This was some time after Parsons came over to TimeWarner in 1995, and I was at Fortune (which was owned by that company at the time). I asked Parsons at a press event why he wasn't making any 'bold moves' to fix TimeWarner, particularly its AOL business. "Bold moves," he snorted back at me. "What bold moves?" Whenever he saw me from then on, he would say, "Here's Mr. Bold Moves." "OK Dick," I'd say to myself.

And who knows, maybe the best course of action was to do what Parsons did, which was to slowly unwind that push-me-pull-you media conglomerate -- the product of what was often described as the worst merger of all time. Later, though, in an Yahoo! interview I did with Parsons in January 2021, he seemed to question his own strategy. "People ask me, 'How would you rate your tenure at TimeWarner?' And I'd say, 'I'd give it a B,' because I never figured out what to do with AOL. It's still around, and they still haven't figured out a business model for it. I'm sure there's one out there somewhere. I just didn't capture it."

That interview took place just after the mob stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and Parsons had quite a bit to say about what happened. Speaking of Donald Trump, he said: "It really is sort of shameful that we have a president who was exhorting the mob. While he didn't advocate violence, when you get tens of thousands of people together, violence is a natural byproduct. He's basically perpetrating a lie, which I believe he knows is a lie. I don't think our President has covered himself with glory here."

But Parsons did add this very important perspective: "There is obviously a large group of folks who feel they have been left behind, in terms of the prosperity of this country," he said. "If we owe Donald Trump anything, we owe him the fact that he revealed how large and how dissatisfied that group of people were."

Parsons saw that even though he lived large. He enjoyed the good life and loved wine, so much so that he bought a vineyard in Italy in 2000 that produced Brunello di Montalcino DOCG, which was stocked at Porterhouse, a fancy steakhouse in what was then the TimeWarner Center. (Trust me, it was some good stuff.) Parsons sold the vineyard in 2021. Someone once told me that the old Time Warner was the kind of company where you wanted to be an employee and not a shareholder.

In October 2007, I was with Parsons in Delhi at a Fortune Global Forum, co-hosting a dinner with him for 300 of the world's top CEOs at that city's iconic Red Fort. I jumped in a taxi from the hotel, and the driver proceeded to get lost in the endless, cacophonic Delhi traffic. Arriving a good 20 minutes late, I ran through a gauntlet of CEO tables arranged in the center of the fort to the stage where I was supposed to have welcomed the assemblage. To my great dismay, Parsons was up there with Kamal Nath, then the country's Minister for Commerce and Industry (essentially the equivalent of our Treasury Secretary). Parsons had been tap dancing, essentially, covering for me. "Oh here he is," Parsons said nonchalantly into the microphone, "the editor of Fortune." I bounded up onto the stage, whereas Parsons stepped aside, patted me on the back, and leaned down to purr in my ear, " Where the f -- were you?" He then gracefully straightened up and smiled at the crowd.

"Dick didn't have what I would call a natural affinity for journalists or journalism because he was a corporate executive and a lawyer," says former Editor in Chief of Time Inc. John Huey. "But he found himself with some journalism on his hands with CNN and Time Inc. And he never once asked me to do anything as far as the journalism goes that made me uncomfortable or insisted on anything or tried to kill anything."

"Once Disney and Time Warner Cable got in one of those contract disputes where Disney was pulled off Time Warner Cable, and we wrote a story in Fortune about it," Huey continued. "I wrote the headline myself, which was 'Dumb and Dumber.' And the story came out and I got a call from Dick, and he says, 'Well, I'll say one thing for you, Huey, you got the headline right.'"

Sometimes, journalists have a tough time acknowledging that someone is remarkable, particularly a businessperson -- as they probably should. Like the rest of us, Parsons had his foibles, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that he was a remarkable guy.

One more story about Parsons -- he was one of those people to whom stories seem to happen -- from that same trip to India 18 years ago. I was driving somewhere in Delhi with Parsons when our car was attacked by a troop of monkeys who jumped all over the roof and windshield, howling and banging. I was a bit freaked out, but Parsons was, as always, unflappable and, in fact, thoroughly amused. That episode led to him retiring my 'Mr. Bold Moves' nickname and replacing it with another greeting whenever he saw me. He would see me and ask, "Hey, remember the monkeys?"

I sure do, Dick. And I always will.

Richard Parsons died on Dec. 26, 2024, at the age of 76.

Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com

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February 28, 2025 16:43 ET (21:43 GMT)

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