Public relations executive was a force behind the growing Miami skyline

PR exec Phyllis Apple made a national star of Miami developer Ugo Columbo. Apple Organization mentored media relations boss Tadd Schwartz.

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