This is an opinion column.

The brother owned a vineyard, for goodness sake. In Italy.

We shared a love of good wine and a few other desires, but Richard Parsons, who served as CEO for Time Warner (where I once worked) and other major corporations, owned a vineyard. In Italy. He was a singular brother.

The Internet is filled with testimonies and obituaries about the gentle corporate fixer who died Thursday at the age of 76, losing a battle with bone cancer. We were blessed to know him, blessed to learn from him what leadership looks.

His death hit many of us hard. Many of us who once worked for him, who were mentored by him, drank wine with him, laughed with him.

Dick, as he was widely known, epitomized corporate savvy, grace and gentleness. That’s a rare trifecta in the C-suite and beyond.

“He knew how to manage a board and let operators operate,” a former Time, Inc. exec told me yesterday.

I’ll share three stories about Dick:

Inc. Dream team

In 1997, I asked him to be part of a package of stories I was producing for Fortune magazine under the cover line: The New Black Power. He shared a page with other African-American corporate titans . Wee called them The Mentors: Black Enterprise founder Earl Graves, insurance legend Ernesta Procope, Tuskegee Airman and former corporate executive Lee Archer and advertising legend Byron Lewis. (Also shown, but not in the group photo, were music impresario Quincy Jones and Inner City Broadcasting founder Percy Sutton.)

The first line of the story read: “If business were an Olympic sport, the people pictured here would be the original Dream team.”

Dick was at least a decade younger than all of them and he had a sly sense of humor. He walked in for the photo shoot, looked at the others to be included in the photo, turned to me with a wry smile and said: “Why you got me in the picture with all these old folks?“

The corporate jet

One year Dickhe invited me to join him in attending a charity dinner in Atlanta. He was taking the corporate jet from New York, attending the dinner, then returning that same evening. It was my one and only time on the Time Warner corporate jet. I called his office and asked his assistant: “What time does the plane leave?” Without missing a beat she replied, “When Mr. Parsons gets there.“ In other words: Get there before he does, young man, or you’ll be standing on the tarmac alone and eating at home tonight. Of course, I arrived early early, the first to board. The flight attendant greeted me. I asked, “Where does Mr. Parsons sit?” She looked at me and said, “smart man“. Of course, I sat somewhere else.

Ah, Sophia

As you’ve probably read from many of the testimonies from other Blacks who worked at Time Warner during Dick’s tenure there, he was amiable and accessible. Indeed, at least twice a year I joined him for breakfast in the executive dining room. We were often the only people there at his preferred hour of the morning. If we weren’t, we were certainly the only African Americans. (Being with him in many lofty settings helped reinforce something I still share with many young people: No matter where you are, act like you belong. Or as my Pastor says: “Act like God sent you.” Dick belonged in any room.)

Our conversations were light, fun, empowering and informative. Once, he shared a story about how cool it was to be at the annual Time 100 event and sitting next to Sophia Loren. Suddenly, atop the Time Warner building in the corporate dining hall just after dawn’s early light, we were just a couple of brothers talking about one of the most iconic, beautiful women in the world.

In 2020, Parsons bought the majestic 20-acre Il Palazzone estate in Montalcino, Italy. In 2018, he told the Hollywood Reporter: “I went to France, South Africa, Australia, Napa, Italy, but Tuscany was the place that spoke to me,” adding jokingly that it cost him “4 billion lire, or six dollars and forty-eight cents” (actually, about $2 million in 2000, when he purchased it). “My kids used to say, ‘Dad, what do you do? It sounds like all you do all day is have meetings.’ Here, you make a product. It grows in the ground, you harvest and vinify the grapes, make the wine.”

He sold it in 2021, leaving it in good hands with friends who are also American.

My wife and I will go there one day and raise a glass to a man, a mentor, and a friend. To the singular brother who once owned the place.

Onward, sir.

I was raised by good people who encouraged me to be a good man and surround myself with good people. If I did, they said, good things would happen. I am a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, an Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.