It was a parade by definition. But all the pomp and circumstance, all the bells and whistles and frills one might expect from a Christmas procession were conspicuously absent from the 1971 promenade through the streets of Fayetteville.
John Malzone, a self-described Yankee who’d moved to the South only a few years before, took notice.
“It was pathetic,” he said, recounting that early ’70s edition as not much more than a few pickup trucks, with Santa perched inside the bed of the last in line.
“It was really anemic, to say the least.”
John expected better, wanted more — and determined his hopes would not be dampened the next time Yuletide cheer was to take center stage in the heart of Fayetteville.
“I gotta tell you, I was embarrassed,” he told council members and the others in attendance at that Fayetteville City Council meeting in January 1972.
The response was immediate, and unexpected.
“Think you can do better?” he recalls one of the council members asking.
John kept the volley alive.
“Yeah,” he answered.
The city’s leaders took John, an unsatisfied New Jersey transplant — a young man without a prestigious title or list of significant accomplishments at the time — at his word. The Christmas parade would become his responsibility, his project to plan and execute.
Over the next several months came all the meetings and phone calls, all the pitches and pleas for participation that foreshadowed the lifestyle John would assume.
Deal-making and connecting with members of the community and with Fayetteville’s stakeholders became his specialty. Add in his natural penchant for seeing potential in people and places (real estate, in particular, is one of his fortes), his still-active involvement in numerous civic organizations, and his love for downtown — what he calls “the heart of the community” — and John’s influence in the area has expanded exponentially over the last five-plus decades.
John, as a result, is one of CityView Magazine’s 2024 Downtown Visionaries honorees. He joins Eric Lindstrom and Hank Parfitt as this year’s recipients, and will be recognized during an event June 13.
A stir-crazy former soldier
The United States Army had its say in John Malzone’s career path in the 1960s.
A perhaps smarter-than-average student, John, now 75, ventured out to Iowa to begin a college stint when he was just 15 years old. But when means started running low and he needed to leave school, he was no longer protected by a student deferment, and the draft met him back in New Jersey. A move to Fort Bragg in 1968 following basic and Advanced Individual Training elsewhere, and a one-year tour in Vietnam, followed.
Then, ready to settle down, John proposed a plan for his recently expanded family, including his new daughter — who still serves as “the best deal I ever got from the government,” he joked, with a bill for her delivery coming in at “like “$2.68.”
“I told my wife [Shirley], I said, ‘Let’s stay in Fayetteville,’” he explained.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘Huh?’
“I said, ‘I think it’s gonna be a nice place to raise a family, and I think it’s gonna be a good, solid community.’”
Before long, he started playing roles to make that prediction ring true.
Two weeks of “time off” followed his military exit before he found a job working for the prominent Fayetteville Fleishman family and their clothing stores in the downtown area, which served as his initial step into the goings-on of downtown Fayetteville.
The “Type A” man kept reaching from there, ultimately earning licenses to buy and sell stocks and insurance before garnering a real estate license.
The last of the three, it turned out, was his ticket to becoming one of downtown’s influential voices.
‘I got involved’
Early on in his new career venture, residential sales was John Malzone’s focus. A property management company and commercial real estate sales later were added to John’s batch of business undertakings.
Meanwhile, John started networking via his membership in the Downtown Merchants Association, which came about as the result of his real estate work.
He “met a lot of people” (like the heads of Fayetteville’s JCPenney and Belk), he said, and learned from those influential men that “if you worked hard” when it came to civic engagement, “it could be good for you.”
“So I got involved,” John said.
The Fayetteville Christmas Parade was his first big project. In the 1980s, he became the mastermind of the city’s Dogwood Festival, which celebrated its 42nd year in April.
John also helped put together the inaugural Parade of Nations, held during the International Folk Festival, and served as its announcer for more than 40 years.
A longtime master of ceremonies for A Dickens Holiday as well, John always was entirely in his element during the event centered in the area he’s been so fond of for decades, according to one of his colleagues, Robin Matthews.
“His personality just totally shines,” said Robin, owner of Hay Street store A Bit of Carolina and a co-member of the Downtown Alliance board with John.
Other examples of the importance John has placed on downtown can be seen in his work with the Olde Fayetteville Association, an organization dedicated to downtown development, and the years he spent helping form and then serve as vice chair of the Historic Resources Commission, the latter of which came about after he spoke up again to share his hopes for the area.
“I told the city council — ’cause I have opinions — I told them we need to take care of our downtown,” John said. “People don’t go to Europe to see new buildings; they go to Europe to see old buildings.”
For years he highlighted those relics for the public by giving tours of downtown, as well.
“John knows everybody downtown and everything, all the history of it, and he’s awesome at sharing the history of it,” Robin said.
And John’s real estate work in the area serves as more proof of his continued commitment. He now owns the Fleishman building, where he first was introduced to downtown when he worked for that family’s retail business, and is said by the Downtown Alliance to have had a hand in selling, leasing, or planning three-fourths of downtown’s properties.
“What I always used to tell people is downtown Fayetteville is the heart of the community. I was selling downtown when nobody was selling downtown, nobody wanted to come downtown. … My love was downtown,” said John, who also takes seriously his desire to advance local businesses that have set up shop there, whether by connecting the right people at the right time or by drawing on his own business or real estate expertise.
If ever Josh Choi, Hay Street’s Winterbloom Tea owner, needs advice, for example, John has picked up the phone and been more than willing to help.
“‘Hey, man, if you need anything, give me a ring,’” Josh said, explaining conversations he’s had with John, who also helped Josh negotiate the lease for Josh’s new speakeasy-style bar in Haymount.
Robin echoed that sentiment, saying whenever she needs the opinion of someone who knows well how downtown operates, “I always go to [John]” — a man she can trust not only because of his success, but also because he’s a “real person” willing to be honest about both what mistakes he’s made and what he’s done well over the years.
“He cheers you on,” Robin added, “and wants you to be successful.”
‘Great fun’
When it comes to the laundry list of titles, duties, and roles John Malzone has played across the last 50-plus years, that desire to find success himself and see others succeed has extended beyond the confines of downtown to the Fayetteville area as a whole, too.
In the 1980s, John was part of a group that sold the National Civic League on the idea that Fayetteville deserved to be named an All-America City. That award — which recognizes civic engagement, collaboration, inclusiveness, and innovation, according to the NCL website — was the first of four All-America City awards Fayetteville has received, more than any other place in North Carolina.
He also has served on Fayetteville’s Kiwanis Club, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, and Cape Fear Valley Health boards — all products of John’s philosophy in life that “if you have an opportunity, you go for it.”
And in nearly all of his descriptions of his tenures with those groups, one phrase kept coming up: “That was great fun.”
Great fun because he met “wonderful people” who were part of his journey to the level of influence in the area he now enjoys, and because they all had an eye on leaving a “lasting impact on the community.”
And although this visionary — who says his “mind is still 18 years old, so I still dream about the future” — still is dedicated to doing more to advance that community, on the rare occasions John does slow down, he is able to reflect on just how significant a mark he’s left.
“My wife would say, ‘Very few people can look over their shoulder and see the results,’” John said, “and I’m very fortunate that I see the results.”
Read CityView Magazine’s “The Downtown Issue” June e-edition here.
