Phyllis Apple was a force behind the growing Miami skyline. She has died at age 100
When Phyllis Apple finally retired and shut the Miami area public relations firm that bore her name — for almost as long as that other Apple business — she did so with her customary brio.
Apple, who died Dec. 27 at age 100 at her home in Princeton, New Jersey, led her retirement press release with: “Yes, ladies and gentleman, the sky just might be falling.”
For 30 years, since she founded The Phyllis Apple Organization in North Miami-Dade in 1979, Apple had publicized real estate clients who had forged the skyline from Miami Beach to Aventura during a remarkable building boom. She did so through her firm’s closing in 2009. Her clients included Jorge Perez of The Related Group, Ugo Columbo and Alicia Cervera Lamadrid.
“I’m not giving this up. I’m having too much fun,” Apple had told the Miami Herald when she was 84 in 2007.
But in 2009, at age 86 and after resisting retirement for years, the housing market had come tumbling in the wake of the 2008 recession and it was time to face the reality of that period, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
Perhaps the sky was falling a bit.
So Apple went out with flair, tending to her beloved Candy Apple — her Maltese dog — as well as golfing and knitting and family. Her youngest daughter, Susan Marcus, who worked alongside her mom at the Apple Organization, started a PR company in Charlotte, North Carolina, to help keep the Apple name and public relations together for a while.
Apple left a legacy as large as the skyline she’d point toward on drives around South Beach and Brickell, her family said. She had represented so many of the developers behind the buildings.
“She was a trailblazer. We had the privilege of starting out with her leading our PR and marketing efforts decades ago. She was simply THE BEST. Intelligent, driven and totally dedicated to her clients — plus a beautiful human being,” said Jorge Perez in an email to the Miami Herald.
“I think when you have a good, healthy attitude it carries you through with everything,” Apple told the Miami Herald in 2003.
Legacy started with family
“When she had her PR firm, she was like Auntie Mame and did special things when we visited,” said Marcus, recalling how her mother had included her children and grandchildren on some of her adventures with well-known clients. “My daughter was at a photo shoot Mom did of Miami Dolphins players and had her be in a photo with them. She put my teenage son in an article of a Spanish magazine about young love — full photo spreads. I remember going on a yacht with Mom and dozens of Miss Teenage America girls.”
Apple had impeccable style, her colleagues and family note. Loved fine clothes. Had her hair styled every morning at the salon right next door to her North Miami Beach area office. But she also let her littlest ones express their own style.
“I was a tomboy and hated dresses, preferring to wear the Hopalong Cassidy shirt, pants, boots and gun holster she bought me,” Marcus remembered. “I was 4, invited to the birthday party of her good friend’s daughter. All the little girls would be wearing party dresses as they did in 1954. I did not not want to put on a party dress, so she let me go to the party in my cowboy outfit. We went to the party together, and I recall us both being very happy.”
‘Queen of real estate’
There always seems to be a queen of something — queen of pop, queen of rock. Apple was characterized by the Herald as the “queen of real estate.” Her firm also served the retail, hotel, spa and restaurant industries, and represented some pro football players.
“Through shear will, guts and chutzpah, she put Miami on the map as an international destination,” said Tadd Schwartz who started his public relations career as an account executive under Apple in 1996. He is now president of Schwartz Media Strategies in Miami.
“We are all living and working today in the wake she created, back when Miami was a blank canvas and it took vision to see the potential for this young city,” Schwartz said. “The Miami we live in today is her legacy.”
Schwartz remembers watching Apple cold-pitch developer Ugo Columbo and Miami real estate to a New York Times business editor in 1996.
“I learned the biz by sitting in front of her desk. She sold the editor on what was happening down here in terms of big money pouring in from all over the world and especially Latin America and New York,” he said. “The editor came down and agreed to meet with all of our clients — and we had a who’s who of Miami real estate developers: Ugo Colombo of CMC Group; Jorge Perez of Related Group; Manny Medina of Terremark; Joe Milton of J. Milton Associates; Alicia Cervera of Cervera Real Estate; Marty Margulies; and many more. These developers were building up Brickell, Miami Beach, Coconut Grove; Key Biscayne, etc.”
After the editor met with a convincing Apple, a passionate Democrat who would later charm U.S. presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he was sold.
“The story became about Miami and how this one developer, a smallish, suave Italian man, was building the finest condo in the country on the shores of Biscayne Bay off Brickell Avenue, labeling the homes ‘mansions in the sky’ as part of the Santa Maria condo — the tallest condo tower south of Manhattan at 54 stories. The story could be written today and it’s a case study on Miami’s first condo boom. And Phyllis was behind it,” Schwartz said.
“Phyllis was an incredible woman. As a promoter, she really helped me in my career in marketing our developments, and positioning the Miami brand as one of the top destinations in the world. She was tough, but very giving and sweet at the same time,” Columbo said.
When Apple was making names like Columbo’s nationally known, the city was coming off its national exposure via the visually stylish NBC detective drama “Miami Vice,” and South Beach was taking off again after a sleepy ‘70s and rough ‘80s. The Miami-area skyline changed from the condo boom she helped publicize.
“We are all still living that trend today with the migration to Miami narrative. We are selling the same story Phyllis created in the early-’90s for Miami,” Schwartz said. “She had the vision for what this city would eventually become: a full-time destination and global city. And she promoted it like no one else could or has done since. She put Miami on the map. That is her legacy.”
Born in Jersey
Apple was born Phyllis Lila Blackman in Newark, New Jersey, on Nov. 30, 1922. After high school, she joined the U.S. Navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVE) during World War II. She was stationed in Washington where she met her first husband, Lt. Commander Albert Rose, with whom she had her three children.
The family lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Apple moved to Miami Beach with her second husband, Bernard Apple.
By 1980, no longer married and 57, Apple was moving full speed into her professional career in PR at an age when some start planning for retirement. At 84, she joked with the Herald that the impetus to start her own company was that she had been a society woman who had raised money for different causes. “I was doing the same work, but not getting paid for it,” she said.
Longevity lessons
In her last year at her Apple Organization in 2009, her company was voted “Best PR Company in the Americas” by a joint collaboration of CNBC and the New York Times. At 84, Apple was the first Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the South Florida Business Journal, Social Miami reported.
“I don’t smoke, don’t drink. I get enough sleep and I enjoy my friends, family and business. That’s what keeps me healthy,” Apple said at the time. She had one more tip on longevity.
“A positive attitude can keep you young. Stay away from negativity.”
Survivors, services
Apple’s survivors include her three children, Sharon Rose Powell, Robert Rose and Susan Marcus. Also, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
A funeral service was scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 30, at Hebrew Cemetery Chapel in Charlotte, North Carolina, with burial at Hebrew Cemetery. The family requests contributions in Apple’s name be made to Feeding America.org.
This story was originally published December 29, 2022 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Phyllis Apple was a force behind the growing Miami skyline. She has died at age 100."
