As Roland Parrish made a U-turn on East Ledbetter Drive three years ago in south Oak Cliff, he caught a glimpse of an empty pool. It was drained and weeds were sprouting from the deep end.
The major McDonald’s franchise owner was meeting with the founders of For Oak Cliff. Parrish was there to get a tour of the former YMCA building the nonprofit had just bought on 10 acres.
Beyond being a well-known businessman with his regional empire of fast food restaurants, Parrish, 71, had been gaining recognition as a philanthropist, setting up his own charitable foundation in 2016.
“What’s up with the swimming pool?” Parrish asked For Oak Cliff co-Founder Taylor Toynes during their site visit.
It had been inoperable for a few years, Toynes told him. When the nonprofit acquired the facility, the bottom of the pool was lined with swampy green water and a few turtles. Toynes and his team drained the sludge themselves because every dollar they raised was going toward closing costs on the building. They had aspirations of fixing the pool up when more money came in, Toynes told Parrish.
That afternoon Parrish said he wanted to put together a plan. He’d put up the dollars to restore the swimming pool, to maintain it, to train teenagers in the community to become lifeguards and to pay the lifeguards.
Since the pool’s opening on Juneteenth in 2021, more than 2,000 Oak Cliff residents have gone there to swim, take swim lessons or do water aerobics for free.
“People pass by and nothing grabs your attention more than that sparkling blue water,” Toynes said.
The pool has brought new faces into For Oak Cliff, as it tries to engage young community members around one of the busiest and deadliest streets in Dallas, Toynes said. And for Parrish, the pool’s restoration is among the more resonate projects the Parrish Charitable Foundation gives to.
“You can actually look out there and see that pool and touch and feel it,” Parrish said. “I really liked that.”
Parrish’s philanthropic spirit
These are the kind of donations Parrish’s foundation focuses on. In a region notorious for big ticket business and charity, he opts for individual scholarships, free bicycles and supporting high school athletic teams and art programs. He’s also contributed larger institutional gifts, like being the second-biggest investor in Reimagining RedBird.
His foundation doesn’t do much fundraising. The organization’s dollars come from the success of the 25 McDonald’s restaurants Parrish, the second largest Black McDonald’s franchisee, owns across Dallas-Fort Worth. His company, Parrish Restaurants Ltd., employs more than 1,300 people and is projected to make $125 million in revenue next year. The Dallas Business Journal has ranked Parrish Restaurants the No. 1 regional Black-owned business for five consecutive years based on sales and employees.
The Parrish Charitable Foundation is run by Parrish and his two children and in 2023 gave away over $370,000, according to the nonprofit’s financial forms.
“I know my dollars don’t compare, but there’s some grassroots programs that people really, really, really appreciate,” Parrish said. “That I hope that I’m able to continue to fund.”
He sees his role in Dallas as encouraging the young people, trying to give out scholarships, and donating to churches, the helpers, the cheerleaders, the baseball players.
For his philanthropic work, Parrish has been named recipient of the 95th Linz Award, one of Dallas’ longest civic honors and given annually by The Dallas Morning News.
The award recognizes community involvement and humanitarian efforts with a significant impact on Dallas in the last decade. It’s presented by The News, the Communities Foundation of Texas and The Dallas Foundation.
Parrish was nominated by the late U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. The Dallas Democrat’s letter of recommendation was accompanied by those of Terry Flower, CEO of St. Phillips School of Dallas and state Rep. Carl Sherman, D-DeSoto.
Past honorees also include Frank Risch, Margot Perot, Tom Luce, Deedie Rose, Ebby Halliday, Caren Prothro, Raymond Nasher and Dolores Gomez Barzune.
The Dallas Park and Recreation Board voted to honor Parrish with a new park in east Oak Cliff for his philanthropic spirit. Construction of the Roland G. Parrish Park in Cadillac Heights broke ground late last year. His alma mater, Purdue University, named its management school library after him in appreciation of his contribution to its restoration. The Parrish Charitable Foundation built and supports a medical clinic in Fort Portal, Uganda, that serves 6,000 orphans each year.
Beyond financing the repair and ongoing operation of the Oak Cliff pool, Parrish has given money to help For Oak Cliff high school interns go see other big cities across the country. Some had never been to a beach, and some had never left Dallas.
@4oakcliff Shoutout to Roland Parrish for bringing our Teen Interns to Chicago! 🛫🌊 #4oakcliff #foroakcliff #chicago #rolandparrish
♬ original sound - For Oak Cliff
Parrish joined the teenagers in August for a visit to his native Chicago. They went to museums and the shoreline along Lake Michigan. At 57th Street Beach, Parrish filmed a TikTok dancing to Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” sporting gray running shorts, a Nike long sleeve shirt and a backwards baseball cap. At the end, the high schoolers are all barefoot in the sand, laughing.
“As a Black man, a Black business owner, Roland Parrish is the epitome of what we need in our community,” Toynes said.
Getting into the Golden Arches
The story of how Parrish became among the top 1 percent of McDonald’s franchisees globally begins with his the rejection of his application to operate a restaurant for the chain.
It was 1986 and Parrish had been promoted into a management position at Exxon-Mobil in Houston. Ruth Anderson, a late licensing manager for McDonald’s, politely and briefly wrote to Parrish that while his qualifications appeared good, they weren’t good enough.
For two months, he called Anderson’s office Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m. until, finally, he got her on the phone. He talked to her about the similarity between gas service stations and restaurants and she didn’t stop him. She said he could continue on with the application process. It ended up taking nine months.
Then for the next two years, he worked 50 hours a week in downtown Houston for Exxon, then drove 30 miles north to log 25 unpaid hours a week at a McDonald’s.
During his first six months of training, he spent most of his five-hour shifts cooking breakfast and dinner.
It was important to him to get familiar with the core of the restaurant business. He noticed fellow trainees who had only worked at the drive-thru and the counter didn’t know the recipes. They didn’t know what came on a Big Mac, for example. It was important for him to dominate the line. Parrish sometimes speaks in sports metaphors given he was an All-American in high school track and field and a team captain while at Purdue University.
Going for six
Six months into the McDonald’s training program, the brand offered him a restaurant in Tulsa. He wasn’t ready and said no. Then they offered him a restaurant in Houston. He knew it wasn’t in a good spot and that he was going to struggle, so he turned that one down, too.
“McDonald’s has a policy,” Parrish said. “You get three shots.”
Then finally they offered him a site in Pleasant Grove. At the time, it was just dirt. But nearby there was construction underway for a school and a police station. Even though he didn’t want to leave Houston — he and his wife Jewel liked their church and neighborhood — he thought this Dallas restaurant would be a good place and his last chance, so he accepted.
“Leaving was one of the best things that happened because when I got here we didn’t know anyone and so I spent 100% of my time with the restaurant,” he said.
After months of construction and permitting delays, the business opened June 19, 1989. While Parrish had counted on paying his employees out of pocket for 30 days, delays meant he didn’t take money home for three more months.
His collection of McDonald’s restaurants, including two inside DFW International Airport, have come a long way since the opening of his first in Pleasant Grove.
A signature of a Parrish-owned McDonald’s are ties and button-down shirts for workers at the front counter. Every employee used to wear a tie with their uniform, he said, but since the kitchen has become more complicated over the years, it’s become less tie-friendly.
Parrish hopes he’ll have another record year as the top Black-owned business in Dallas-Fort Worth.
“Finding out I have five years in a row, when you get that six,” he paused. “I’m going to feel like Michael Jordan.”
While the long hours of the restaurant business are no secret, they proved longer than the former corporate worker had imagined. Ten- to 12-hours days were typical, with some days running upwards of 18.
Parrish used to drive around with a toolkit and extra motors in his car for when the kitchen exhaust fans inevitably busted after 6 p.m. or on the weekends when the parts store was closed. He still keeps an apron in his car.
The only time he remembers taking real breaks was throughout the Jimmy Johnson era of the Dallas Cowboys, when the team went from 1-15 in 1989 to taking home Super Bowl titles in 1992 and 1993.
“I always took a break to watch them,” Parrish said. “But what I missed was Michael Jordan.”
During the first 10 years of operating McDonald’s restaurants, he rarely took time off. He missed getting to be a die-hard Chicago Bulls fan like his parents and friends in his hometown of Hammond, Ind., a half hour outside of Chicago.
So during the early days of the pandemic, when he’d spend his Sunday afternoons catching up on administrative work, he made sure he got home in time to watch The Last Dance, the Netflix documentary on the Chicago Bulls’ 1998 NBA championship run, the last of the Michael Jordan era.
“I caught up with Michael Jordan with The Last Dance,” Parrish said. “That was really great.”
The next chapter for Parrish
Throughout his career he’s missed a lot. He’s preparing to start downsizing his company and focus more of his time toward his charity.
Parrish is older than many people think, he said smiling. Up until a few years ago, people thought he was still in his 50s. At 71, he’s starting to slow down. Before he hit 70, he was running 20 miles a week. He’s ramped it down to 5. He was riding his King Ranch quarter horse, Mr. EZ, three times a week during the pandemic, but he’s taking a break from riding. Mr. EZ is out at the pasture for now, but Parrish stops by every two weeks with carrots to feed him.
“He’s getting up there too now,” Parrish said. “EZ is about 22 now.”
He wants to travel more with Jewel, his wife of 47 years. As the son of a Baptist minister, Parrish has always been involved in his church. He’s been a treasurer, a deacon, an elder, a musician. What he’s doing at Red Bird’s Concord Church now is becoming a bench member.
“I really just go there and enjoy the message, the word. I’m not worried about the music, or the air conditioning, or the heater, or parking or potholes. Did I prepare my Sunday School lesson?” Parrish said. “My responsibility now is tithing.”
But most of all, there are young people in his life who, regardless of bloodlines, view him as a father, as Uncle Ro or as a grandfather. Like his sister-in-law’s son and his children’s first cousin, Wesley. It wasn’t until Wesley was an adult that Parrish realized he was the sole father figure in Wesley’s life.
“Hey, we missed all those years,” Parrish said to him. As Wesley was growing up, Parrish took Wesley out with his own son who is just one year apart. “But it would have been more.”
There’s also the girl who asked Parrish if he would be her grandfather in 2005. The two met as her mom and her grandmother worked for Parrish starting in 1996 when he opened a restaurant in the airport.
Some four or five years into his “grandfather role,” he invited the girl and her mother to a suite he rented at a Dallas Mavericks game. When he asked the attendent to grab something for his granddaughter, they took a second look. The girl is Latina and Parrish is Black.
“It gives me a good feeling that people, younger people, would look at me as this role model or this father figure,” he said.
“Roland,” he tells himself. “You gotta enjoy this.”
