Atlanta’s Emperor of Empty Lots

On a damp Saturday evening in Manhattan, in a cigar bar on East 63rd Street, John Dewberry, who is among the most powerful real estate developers in the South, begins to weep for the second time in roughly 24 hours. The first time, the previous night, was during a performance of Hamilton, which he attended with his fiancée, Jaimie Brown. At 29, she is Dewberry’s junior by 25 years; they met in a skybox at a football game at Georgia Tech, where Dewberry starred at quarterback in the 1980s. Brown is now sitting across from him, nodding sympathetically. “That’s why Jesus died on the cross!” Dewberry says, tears sliding onto his cheeks, which are tanned from a recent bonefishing trip to the Bahamas. “That’s why Martin Luther King Jr. died! That’s why Abraham Lincoln died! For the truth!”

Dewberry’s late father, Gary, was among other things a Baptist minister, and Dewberry has a churchman’s instinct for narrative. He favors parables, similes, and metaphors, many of them based on American history and family lore. The tale he’s weeping over now is a childhood episode involving snowballs, plonking a police cruiser, and sticking around to fess up to the deed. Like certain preachers and some criminal lawyers, Dewberry, who was born in Virginia, can be swept away by his own oratory, which he delivers in down-home Southern style: “Georgia” equals “Geo-juh.” His tendency to self-mythologize is best read as a way to make sure he’s not misunderstood.