Football or Business, He Plays the Game Well : Jean Fugett Steps Easily Into His Late Brother’s Shoes as Head of Nation’s Largest Black-Owned Firm

NEW YORK —  He makes his 6-foot-3 presence quietly felt. You’d never guess Jean S. Fugett Jr. was a lawyer, broadcaster, former newspaperman, Super Bowl veteran, Amherst scholar.

Nor would he likely volunteer that he is the younger brother and successor of the late Reginald F. Lewis, one of America’s boldest entrepreneurs who engineered the success of TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc., by far the nation’s biggest black-owned company.

“Those things have to be forced out of him,” said Lee A. Archer Jr., a TLC Beatrice board member. “He’s a real down-to-earth guy.”

That earthy modesty seems to stand in sharp contrast to the driving ambition of Lewis. Yet the brothers were close friends, partners and confidants.

So when Lewis learned he had brain cancer at age 50, it made perfect sense for him to prep his brother as the next leader of TLC Beatrice. He made Fugett vice chairman days before he died two months ago. Then the board made Fugett chairman.

“This was not a gift to him. Of all the people in the organization, despite Reggie’s dominance in TLC, there is still no one who was more in line to accept the chairmanship than Jean,” Archer said.

Nonetheless, Fugett (pronounced FU-get) now faces the biggest challenge in a 41-year-old life already unique with remarkable achievements. It remains unclear to outsiders how he will carry on Lewis’ vision for TLC Beatrice, which Lewis transformed from a food-distribution business into a privately owned investment conglomerate.

Fugett declined to be interviewed. But conversations with a range of acquaintances portray him as almost universally liked and respected, with a subtle, forceful and quick mind.

“He was not a yes man,” said Archer. “He didn’t always agree with his brother.”

Others depict Fugett as a quiet person who always had something extra going for him: the football player who was a newspaper intern, the football player attending law school. A broadcaster. A man with concerns willing to sacrifice his livelihood. A man who made friends.

“We were pals,” said Ben Bradlee, who was executive editor at the Washington Post when Fugett, then a tight end on the Washington Redskins, applied for an intern opening. Bradlee hired him.

Fugett and Lewis grew up in working-class Baltimore. They have different surnames because Fugett was born after their divorced mother remarried.

Both brothers were standout athletes, particularly Fugett, who attended Amherst at age 16, played football and basketball and became executive editor of the school newspaper.

He graduated with honors four years later in 1972 and was recruited by the Dallas Cowboys, where he played for four years, including Super Bowl X, which Dallas lost to Pittsburgh. Fugett played for Washington until 1979 and attended George Washington Law School after practice.

Asa Davis, who directed black studies at Amherst while Fugett was there, said he then regarded Fugett as a leading figure among the young black intelligentsia.

His contemporaries included writer Ralph Ellison, jazzman Yusef Latif, a promising basketball player named Julius Erving, a poet named Sonia Sanchez.

“It does me great pride that all these guys were honor students,” Davis said. “We could see that he would be a big success in business or law or administration.”

Jim Ostendarp, who retired last year after 33 years as coach of the Amherst team, said Fugett “was probably the best tight end we had.”

Calvin Hill, who played for 13 years in the National Football League, including on two Super Bowl teams, was already at Dallas when the guy with the French-looking name from Amherst arrived. “I wasn’t sure what we were getting,” Hill said.

One day in the locker room, Hill recited a passage from “MacBeth” and the rookie from Amherst finished it impromptu. A friendship began.

“He wasn’t a guy who lorded his intellect over anybody,” said Hill, now a vice president with the Baltimore Orioles.

Fugett was also known for the range of interests he held while playing football. He hosted a jazz radio show, “Flight Time,” and became a players union representative who fought race and wage discrimination in the workplace.

“That’s been his life,” Hill said. “He’s been involved in lots of different kinds of things, always had a lot of different balls in the air.”

His football career ended with a knee injury that Washington said prevented his full-time return. But some people tell a different story.

Ed Garvey was executive director of the NFL Players Assn. while Fugett was a player rep involved in a discrimination study. He suggested in an interview that that was the reason Washington and Fugett parted ways.

“If they want to get rid of you, you’re hurt,” said Garvey, now a Wisconsin lawyer.

The Washington general manager at the time, Bobby Beathard, said then that they had wanted to keep Fugett if he had “worked hard enough . . . but that’s not his nature.”

Garvey disputed that, saying Fugett’s nature included a social agenda that called for the end of disparities between poor and rich players and, in particular, black and white players.

“It’s really just a fairness question for players in a closed system,” Garvey said. “I have to believe that what motivated him then motivates him today.”

Fugett’s most recent dabblings included a brief stint as a football color commentator for CBS Sports.

He co-hosted programs including the Washington pregame show, “where he really brought a lot to the table. It was a critical success, that show was,” said program director Rich Bonn.

When he resigned abruptly in December, he did so for personal reasons, never telling co-workers about his brother’s illness or the profound pain he must have been feeling. Fugett’s friends said that was characteristic of him.