Southern gentleman Taylor dead at 78

ATLANTA, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Charles "Mack" Taylor, an Atlanta real estate mogul described as a quintessential Southern gentleman, has died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at 78.

Taylor, who worked his way from his hometown of Opelika, Ala., to the pinnacle of Atlanta society, died Saturday at his home in the Buckhead neighborhood he helped develop, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

After he left his job as a cotton broker to enter the real estate business in the late 1960s, he became one of the city's leading developers, seeing potential in previously undiscovered areas like Buckhead, the newspaper said.

But Taylor also excelled at the more gentlemanly pursuits.

He enjoyed hunting and fishing, and gave colleagues stiff, friendly competition on the golf course, the Journal-Constitution reported. He also served on the boards of many charitable organizations.

Author Tom Wolfe said he wrote his 1998 novel "A Man in Full" after Taylor and his wife took him on a tour of southern hunting plantations. The book, a chronicle of a southern real estate developer who will do anything to succeed, got Wolfe shunned from polite Atlanta society, but Taylor stuck by the writer, and Wolfe has said Taylor was too nice to inspire his book's protagonist.