AP
New York lost one of its key “wise men” last week with the death of Richard Parson at 76.
“Dick was an American original, a colossus bestriding the worlds of business, media, culture, philanthropy, and beyond,” mourned his friend Ronald Lauder.
A Brooklyn native who started college at 16, he starred in basketball at the University of Hawaii before earning his law degree from Albany Law School in 1971.
As a young lawyer, he was an aide to Gov. and then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Moving to the private sector, he eventually became COO then CEO of Dime Savings Bank and later CEO of Time Warner and chairman of Citigroup — building a rep for guiding big companies through rough seas.
In that light, he stabilized CBS after the stormy ouster of Les Moonves and helped the Los Angeles Clippers move on from the Donald Sterling racism nightmare.
As a philanthropist, he chaired the board of the Jazz Foundation of America and the Apollo Theater Foundation and co-chaired the advisory board of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
And he served on the transition teams for Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, as well as President Barack Obama.
Parsons also joined his friend Lauder in the effort to keep the race-blind admissions test for New York City’s elite public high schools and in funding ways to increase the number of black and Hispanic students who gain admission — and in launching the Equity Alliance, a fund that backs ventures by women and people of color.
Our city and nation benefited greatly from his graceful leadership, private and public.
Rest in peace.