Dan's Papers - September 21, 2007 - Anthony Drexel Duke's Long & Remarkable Life in East Hampton

Anthony Drexel Duke, who with the help of Richard Firstman, has written his memoir Uncharted Course, a voyage of an extraordinary man. Now 88 years old, he has experienced enough adventures, careers and accomplishments to fill several lifetimes. During World War II, after a stint as an undercover intelligence operative attached to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, he commanded a fleet of amphibious landing crafts and LSTs, with the perilous task of delivering thousands of men to the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa. He has had careers as a cattle rancher, import/exporter of war surplus vehicles, real estate entrepreneur and tireless fundraiser. He has been married four times and has eleven children, and, at last count, twenty grandchildren and four great grandchildren. His crowning achievement, however, is founding Boys Harbor (later called Boys and Girls Harbor), a camp and educational institution in East Hampton and East Harlem through which he helped to enrich the lives of tens of thousands of disadvantaged children from the inner city.

Uncharted Course is a breezy, colorful autobiography. Anthony Drexel Duke is the product of three prominent American families - the Dukes of North Carolina who founded Duke University, the Drexels, early financiers along with J.P. Morgan for the new American Republic and the Biddles of Philadelphia, who trace their American roots back to the earliest settlers. Born into privilege, the Biddles not only claim the distinguished World War II diplomat, Ambassador Anthony Biddle, Tony Duke's uncle, but also Tony Biddle, our author's Granddaddy, a most endearing character. His eccentricities were legendary and included keeping live alligators in his living room, passions for opera and boxing, and teaching athletic Christianity in his home on Walnut Street, which included a mix of Bible classes, hymn singing and no-holds-barred boxing bouts. This combination proved so popular that the Drexel Biddle Bible Classes gained almost 300,000 adherents across America. It was most likely Granddaddy's impulse to spread self-reliance and moral values that had such a great influence on his grandson's future.

Cordelia Biddle, Tony Duke's mother, inherited her father's wayward spirit. She hated school, loved boxing and was wild about dancing. At the age of fifteen she met Angier Buchanan Duke at a party, dropped out of boarding school and married him the following year in a huge society wedding in Philadelphia, attended by 1,200 guests. Angier Biddle was not without financial resources and liked to live well. He indulged in his enthusiasm, motorcars, and had a Torpedo-Phaeton Rolls Royce custom built, fortunately featuring speed and brake levers. He and Cordelia had two sons, Angier and Anthony, but the marriage ran into trouble and they later divorced. When Tony was five years old, his father drowned in a boating accident - a loss he describes movingly.

Cordelia remarried and she and her husband, Thomas Markoe Robertson, led an enviable life between New York, Paris and Southampton, socializing with famous friends including Cole Porter, Gary Cooper, Mayor Jimmy Walker, Charlie Chaplin and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Prohibition was in full swing and Cordelia became fascinated with bootleggers and caused a stir when she visited Legs Diamond, whom she described as "such a nice little fellow," in jail.

Angier and Tony's life was more sheltered. They were sent to the exclusive St. Paul's prep school, whose purpose was to educate, instill moral values and produce future leaders of America. Each school day began with prayers in the Chapel and, while it excluded Jewish and African American students, the Headmaster at that time, Dr. Samuel Drury, was a former missionary and encouraged his privileged pupils to spend a portion of their summer vacations as counselors at a summer camp for kids from the less fortunate areas of New York City. This is where Tony Duke found his vocation. Drawing on his training from Granddaddy Biddle, he coached boxing and basketball at the camp, broke up fights and developed an appreciation for the kids. After camp, he would drive some of the boys home to the Lower East Side. It was at the height of the Depression and the awful conditions they lived in made a lasting impression on him. At age eighteen, after graduation from St. Paul's and with the help of fellow graduates including Claiborne Pell, John Lindsay and Paul Moore, he went on to establish his own camp, Duck Island at Jessup's Neck on Peconic Bay. He wanted the kids to have a good time - living in tents, hiking and sailing - but to also learn discipline and mutual respect. To quote one of the boys, Tony Albarello, "It was like a paradise, that camp. I'd never been out to the country, away from the hot streets. It was like a whole new world, Peconic Bay, with all the trees and the grass. We went on boats and canoes, we went to movies in Southampton, we played games. I never wanted to go home. If I didn't go to that camp who knows what would have happened, because a lot of bad stuff came out of that (his) neighborhood." This was the first of several camps that Tony Drexel Duke was to spearhead, each with expanding enrollment and mandates. Through his connection with Paul Moore, who had become a priest at a parish in Jersey City, Duke began to enroll mostly African American boys at his camp at Three Mile Harbor, an arrival East Hampton residents initially rejected but eventually welcomed.

His first female counselor, whom he met while in his sophomore year at Princeton, was Alice Rutgers (of the Rutgers University family). They were married in September 1939 and two months later, feeling that the U.S. would eventually enter the war against Hitler, he began training at the Office of Naval Intelligence. He wanted to go to sea but there were not enough ships built, so he killed time in Argentina, trying every which way to get into the action. Eventually, he got his ship LST-530 - a 327-foot, 10,000 ton amphibious vessel designed to carry up to a thousand men, dozens of tanks and a 110-foot landing craft. What he learned as Commander of the LST-530 and later, with a fleet of six LSTs in the Pacific, plus his and his men's miraculous survival during these years, is a book in itself. Though he and his crew escaped death, the war years took a toll. One of the few moments of introspection in the book come when the war is over and Tony Duke faces the prospect of returning to civilian life. He dreads it. It is telling that after a huge sentimental goodbye party on the ship and a boozy victory train ride back from San Francisco to New York, he did not go home immediately to see his wife, mother and young son whom he had not seen in a year, but spent time inside a bar with old pals from St. Paul's. Then he ran into a friend of his Father, which entailed more delay. Finally, Tony went home. This is possibly an unexplored explanation of why his careers were always successful but his marriages less so.

Gossipy revelations and Freudian analysis are not the purview of this autobiography. It has to be acknowledged that there are times when the list of his triumphs and the recitation of all his great friends become tiresome (in the acknowledgements in the back of the book, I counted over four hundred names. Among them are four New York City Mayors, four United States Presidents and thirteen of his dogs). But this is, after all, a supremely active, connected man.

He founded his camps in order to give troubled children a chance at a better life. He worked hard to see his philosophy of respect and self-respect among children and teachers pay off, recognizing talented graduates and putting them in positions of authority. In his fundraising capacity he got Brooke Astor to donate the money for the first New York City Boys Harbor on East 94th Street. The remedial education increased as the years went by. Sadly, the camp in East Hampton closed in 2005 and the land had to be sold to support the growing expenses of the Boys and Girls Harbor in the City. It is however to his great credit that Anthony Drexel Duke, born into such good fortune, did not simply donate money to charity as is often the custom, but devoted so much of his life and passion to the expansion and betterment of the lives of others less fortunate.