James Piper III, president of Piper & Co. which later merged with actual property agency of O’Conor & Flynn, dies – Baltimore Solar

James Piper III — former president of the true property agency Piper & Co., which later merged to kind O’Conor, Piper & Flynn Realtors — died of congestive coronary heart and respiratory failure April 1 at Roland Park Place, a retirement group. The longtime resident of Winding Method in Poplar Hill was 89.

“Jim was a real gentleman and it was my luck to have labored with him at Piper & Co.,” mentioned John G. Evans, who joined the agency in 1968 and was made companion 5 years later. “He was very dedicated to his career, household and associates, and he was thought of by all to be a high quality particular person.”

James Piper III was born in Baltimore to James Piper Jr., an actual property agent, and Jane Cowl Piper, and raised in Eccleston, Baltimore County.

He was the grandson of James Piper Sr., founding father of the Baltimore legislation agency Piper & Marbury, and his maternal grandfather was Loring Andrews Cowl, the founder and president of the Safety Cement and Lime Co.

He attended Gilman College and graduated in 1952 from Episcopal Excessive College in Alexandria, Virginia.

Mr. Piper earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1956 from the College of Virginia, the place he was a member of the Delta Psi fraternity.

After graduating from Virginia, he served three years as a lieutenant aboard the USS Cacapon, a fleet oiler in each the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Discharged in 1959, he joined his father’s actual property enterprise, Piper & Co. Inc., which had initially been established in 1933 as Piper & Hill with companion J. William Hill. Mr. Hill later left the partnership in 1955 and based his personal agency.

After his father’s demise in 1964, Mr. Piper took over as president of the five-member agency that turned often called Piper & Co. Inc., and whose slogan was “The Residence Staff.”

In 1983, on the corporate’s fiftieth anniversary, Mr. Piper defined his philosophy in an interview with The Baltimore Solar: “We wish to be distinctly completely different in a optimistic approach; sufficiently small to be thought of human and enormous sufficient to supply all companies.”

Throughout his tenure, the true property agency expanded and added further places of work.

In 1984, Mr. Piper’s agency merged with O’Conor & Flynn and have become O’Conor, Piper and Flynn Realtors. The corporate had 700 brokers and 21 places of work throughout the state.

“These 4 males, Jim Piper, Jim O’Conor, Invoice Flynn and John Evans had a fantastic work ethic and I liked being part of the agency,” mentioned To Mooney, who’s a companion in O’Conor, Mooney & Fitzgerald Realtors. “These 4 males have been an actual power within the enterprise.”

“Jim gave every thing he needed to the enterprise, and I by no means noticed him indignant about something,” recalled Mr. Evans. “He was all the time giving and supportive and it was an honor to work with a person like that, and the trade all the time regarded him as being on the prime of their career.”

In 1998, the enterprise was acquired by the nation’s largest actual property firm, NRT Inc. of Parsippany, New Jersey, and have become O’Conor, Piper & Flynn-ERA, which in 2002, merged with Coldwell Banker Actual Property.

After they joined NRT, companion James P. O’Conor advised The Solar that by becoming a member of a nationwide agency his firm would have “a level of perpetuity, stability and development that in any other case could be very troublesome to handle.”

Mr. Piper retired in 1999.

Throughout his profession, he was the president of the A number of Itemizing Board of Maryland, Larger Board of Realtors, Nationwide Affiliation of Realtors in Maryland and the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Piper was wellknown for his civic activism.

He and his spouse volunteered with Undertaking Increase, a mentoring program established by the Abell Basis and sponsored by the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.

This system was succeeded by the Maryland Mentoring Partnership, which later merged with Huge Brothers Huge Sisters of America, and was lastly included into the Y of Central Maryland.

In 1981, Mr. Piper was appointed to the Baltimore Metropolis Basis by Mayor William Donald Schaefer. Different boards he served on embrace the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Residing School rooms Basis and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.

As a board member of the Irvine Nature Heart, Mr. Piper and Dixon Gibbs, his brother-in-law, raised funds for the character middle to develop to a greater than 300-acre website in Owings Mills.

“Jim liked giving again to the group in any capability as a result of he was grateful for the various issues he had in his personal life, and he needed to make the lives of different’s higher,” Mr. Mooney mentioned. “He by no means shied away from that accountability and he didn’t simply do it with the stroke of a pen. He stepped proper up and bought into the motion.”

[ Michael Desmond Quinn, founder of real estate company Wye Group, dies ]

Mr. Mooney mentioned Mr. Piper impressed him to offer again to the group.

“I’m a Loyola Excessive College graduate and the varsity’s Jesuit motto is ‘A Man for Others,’ and Jim was definitely that,” he mentioned.

A wildfowl hunter, Mr. Piper and his spouse, the previous Mary “Mimi” Gibbs, loved spending summers at a second dwelling in Oxford on the Jap Shore.

The couple went on 31 journeys overseas that have been sponsored by the Baltimore Museum of Artwork.

Opera followers, they visited opera homes in Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Berlin, and have been patrons of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.

A resident of Roland Park Place since 2021, Mr. Piper had been a member of the Maryland Membership, Elkridge Membership, Inexperienced Spring Valley Hunt Membership and the Bachelors Cotillon. Different pursuits included tennis, snowboarding and golf.

Mr. Piper was a communicant and vestryman of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, the place he had been a choir member and sang for greater than 20 years with The Foxheads, the church’s males’s a cappella group, of which he was a founding member.

The Rev. Dr. Alfred C.D. Vaughn was an influential determine in each the spiritual and civic lifetime of Baltimore and he was the longtime pastor of Sharon Baptist Church in Baltimore. (Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Solar)

A funeral service will likely be held at 11 a.m. Monday at his church, 232 St. Thomas Lane, Owings Mills.

Along with his spouse of 36 years, Mary Gibbs, a former metropolis social employee and Bryn Mawr College educator, Mr. Piper is survived by three daughters, Jenepher Kimberly Piper of Towson, Loring Piper Weidner of San Rafael, California, and Elizabeth Prentice Piper of Charlottesville, Virginia; two stepsons, Thomas Waxter III of Roland Park and Dixon Gibbs Waxter of Denver; and 7 grandchildren. An earlier marriage to Elizabeth Kimberly Turner led to divorce.