Volume 2, Number 1                                                                 January 1998

----- Newton Duke Angier

Angier Biddle Duke ... diplomat, statesman, family man.

Angier Biddle Duke Jr., Son

I wanted my father to live forever. And he does. In us! We all shared his wisdom, his optimism, his devotion to people and ideas, and the belief that nothing should prevent them from flourishing. He believed one's life should count. His did. Angie Duke cared. There is no substitute for a father who cares.

He is gone and there is a crippling silence. Even with me living on the other side of the earth in Argentina he was so very present in my life. Just last week he fired off a stern rebuke to me for some journalistic recklessness. A day later he was quizzing my wife Idoline about her progress with Spanish and about his granddaughter's schedule at school. Dad would clip every article on Argentina he saw and fax it to me at the newspaper where I work. My boss liked to joke that I'd been a good hire because I came with a clipping service in New York. That was Dad. Always there.

In the last few years when I'd call, he'd often be on a mission in some troubled comer of the world or he'd be in the swimming pool or in the ocean, or out biking or rollerblading. I can picture him so clearly last Saturday afternoon as he whizzed down Gin Lane in his speed suit, his beret, a tape of America's favorite marches playing on his headset. He loved all those horns, cymbals and drums. Music to stride to, he'd say. My father was an unforgettably happy man. He got most of the way through a selection entitled "Invincible Eagle" when it happened. It is too unbelievably appropriate. He skated away as our invincible American eagle. That was the father-the Angie Duke-we knew and loved.

The ocean was one of Dad's favorite places. Two years ago I wrote a Father's Day tribute to him about our times together in the sea. Reading it now. it seems almost prescient. This is what I wrote: Right around Father's Day we start swimming in the Atlantic. A strong and fearless swimmer, my 77-year-old Pop is likely out there now with the hardy few, bobbing among the waves off Eastern Long Island where he grew up.

It's strange about my father and me; perhaps it is the same with all fathers and their sons. I have spent a generation with him, but our time together has slipped through my fingers like water.

The family has tried to preserve the moments in snapshots and letters. And they are there to remind us of life's significant and unusual milestones. But it is the ordinary times, the ones that are not part of the official record that I return to again and again.

I am groping for those pure moments of affection between a parent and a child. And coming into focus is ocean swimming with Pop. The best ocean times were risky, a challenge, because it's only then that we gained a little confidence and respect.

As a youngster on the beach, my embarrassment at our early summer pale nakedness and Pop's swimming cap and behind-the-times trunks would wash away as the family slipped into the Big Blue. Over the years I realized with certain pride that my father is unique in a world of conformity. He laughed through 30 years of ribbing about his funny swimming costumes, yet they continued to raise eyebrows.

Were he not a fine swimmer, ocean time would not be so important. There was nothing more humiliating than being left on the beach on a rough day, nothing that brought us closer than walking together back to our starting point after being swept down the beach in the current. That was where we settled the issues of our lives. Where we talked about family and friends and jobs and politics and where our foibles and feuds were dwarfed by something more important. Ocean swimming was how we remembered other places. Comparing them with the beach and ocean of home, no matter how absurd the notion, is a family tradition. And by that tradition no ocean approaches our own, in danger or beauty or meaning.

Nothing can compare because of the memories; because it is our father's place.

God bless you, Dad!

Duke’s Mixture

Let Us Know Where You Are And What You’re Doing!

It’s been a long time since we’ve been in touch with you…the last newsletter was in 1993! If you got this newsletter, then maybe we have the right address…if not, let us know the correct one. Also, give us updated information on your phone/fax numbers and, if applicable, your E-mail address. Please let us know if you have Internet access because we are considering the possibility of establishing a web site for the Duke Family Association.

Also, tell us what you and your family have been doing that we can share with other family members in the next newsletter.

Ambassador Timothy Towell, friend & colleague

Duty...and Service...

These are the values and ideals that personified the life and the career of our friend and colleague, Angier Biddle Duke. Diplomat and statesman, five-time United States Ambassador, he has left this world a far better place.

The outlines of his remarkable career are well known; out of service in World War II, he joined the Foreign Service and was posted first to Buenos Aires and then Madrid. President Harry S. Truman named him Ambassador to El Salvador, the youngest U. S. Ambassador in history. John Fitzgerald Kennedy appointed him Chief of Protocol with the personal rank of Ambassador. He was President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Ambassador in Madrid. After his second stint as Chief of Protocol, Johnson sent him as Ambassador to Denmark. President Jimmy Carter asked Angie to return to service as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco, and he finally "retired" from formal diplomatic service in 1981 at the beginning of the Reagan administration.

Robin has asked me to recount some anecdotes about Angie in Spain; there are so many wonderful memories and stories that I could keep you here all afternoon. But I will tell one and expand upon the historical episode that Senator Pell just mentioned: the H-Bomb and the swim at Palomares.

In January 1966, a U.S. B-52 bomber based at Torrejon near Madrid exploded while refueling in mid-air, and four H-bombs that were on board rained down on the small village of Palomares in southeast Spain. The U. S. Air Force typically viewed the event solely as a U. S. military concern. The genius of Angie's diplomacy is that he addressed the issue of Spanish sovereignty and the problem of U. S. basing and overflights of nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War. The story I want to tell is about the swim.

The U. S. quickly recovered the three bombs that fell on dry land, but a fourth had fallen offshore in the Mediterranean at a great depth. It took a great effort by the U. S. Navy to recover that bomb using the latest technology of that time, including deep-water submarines.

The Spanish were concerned that possible atomic radiation from the bomb in the sea would hurt their flourishing tourist industry, which was fueling the Spanish economic boom. Angie had the great idea of using the inau

guration of a new Spanish parador--one of the chains of government-sponsored tourist inns-to demonstrate to the world that fears of nuclear radiation were groundless. Angie invited the Spanish Minister of Information and Tourism, Manuel Fraga, to take a swim together in the Mediterranean in front of the world press before the inauguration ceremonies.

At the appointed time, Angie and his team were there and no Fraga, so after a decent interval, we all took a swim and Angie was photographed and interviewed by the press. We then dressed and were up on the Parador's terrace, ready for the inauguration ceremonies to begin when Minister Fraga arrived. Sometime shortly thereafter we looked around for Fraga, could not find him and spotted him in bathing trunks, surrounded by the press, walking toward the water. Angie's concept of a joint U. S. Spanish symbolic swim, was in danger of becoming a 100% Spanish event. I spied a tent some 25 yards down the beach and Angie and I ran down there and burst in on a half dozen U. S. Navy Seals taking a break on their cots. Angie tore off his Bond Street clothes, put on a damp bathing suit loaned to him by one of the Navy Seals and tore out of the tent at a dead run heading for Minister Fraga and his gaggle of press. Their tradjecto- came together at the water's edge--I will never forget the look of dismay on Fraga's face-and the front pages of the world's press the next day showed Angie and Fraga swimming together and proving that Spain's beautiful Mediterranean seacoast was not radioactive.

Duty and Service. That is the legacy of Angier Biddle Duke. The world and the nation have lost a great diplomat and statesman .... and we have lost a friend.

Letitia C. Lynn, Step Daughter

I was thirteen when my mother married Angie and I thought my world had fallen apart. Of course, almost everything that happens to a thirteen year old feels that way. And then, a baby named Biddle was born and I held him in my arms and someone took a picture in black and white and my ankles were correctly crossed and I wondered how many more new things I could stand.

And Marilu was my new sister and Dario, my brother and Pony all big and grown-up and gone. And this man called Angie, my stepfather, seemed nice enough, but who knew?

And I went away to school, and came home for vacations and sat on the stairs at Foxhall Road and listened to Marilu stomp away in the large, coat closet downstairs where she practiced Flamenco and thought how surprising and uncontrollable life was.

And suddenly we moved to Spain and we drove around in official Embassy cars with the American flag flying on the front and once we drove right into the building in Madrid to see the Beatles, and I thought that maybe it was okay after all that this man called Angie had married my mother.

Life with Angie was non-stop--funny, full of surprises, full-speed and full-tilt. A kid at heart, he was fearless, curious, eager, impatient. He was always the first over the edge of a ski slope or into a raging sea. And no-one, except my mother, looked more elegant in clothes. Natty, dapper, self-possessed. Yet only Angie could turn up in a brightly colored tam-o-shanter with a huge yarn pompom on top of his head and get away with it. He was an original. Before my mother married Angie, I didn't know that people stood up and talked out loud in the middle of dinner. Now, thirty three years later, the thought of a

future without his familiar voice at family gatherings is unbearable.

How much joy he has given us and, in recent years, how much joy his grandchildren gave him. As my daughter, Maggie, once wrote to him, "I love grandpa as a funny old boy." Endlessly cheerful, he was always overjoyed to see them. They sensed the kid in him-the teasing, cajoling, boogeying, roughhousing, funny old grandpa. As Maggie said last night, "His heart was too strong to stop by itself."

How much he loved us. How much he loved you, Mother. He would not have wanted us to weep too much. he would not have wanted us to weep too long, but rather to take up his song of life; to seize each moment and live and love as passionately as he; to heed his lesson of service. Listen, and you will hear him each time we gather. Remember the familiar tug at his nose; worrying his watchband. Listen, and you will hear him say, "This is what is important-that we come together often and celebrate each other's lives." My life was forever changed when my mother married Angie. He loved me as a father loves a daughter and I loved him as my own.

Ambassador William J. vanden Hewel, friend & colleague

We come together this afternoon, touched by a sense of our own vulnerability, to celebrate the magical journey of Angie's life.

In his friendship we knew the grace of a gentle man. He was, of course, also a gentleman-elegant, optimistic, sensitive, beautifully mannered, always thoughtful. If America had an aristocracy, Angie would have been Lord of the Realm. The names of three great families belonged to him-and each was made more lustrous by his life.

My brief remarks will touch upon his 40 years of service to the cause of political freedom and human need, most particularly through the International Rescue Committee-the IRC--a group that he helped make the most significant non-sectarian refugee agency in the world.

If there is a word that expresses the purpose of Angie's public life, it is freedom. He first went to the refugee camps of Vietnam in 1955. Given a choice by the Geneva

agreement, more than a million Vietnamese in that year fled from the North to the South of their country. The IRC rallied America's response. In that moment of hope, Angie was at the center of the storm, arranging for food and medicine, bringing tools to build housing, lifting children to the sky and sharing their laughter. Later that year, he was elected president of the IRC Leo Cherne was his mentor and with John Whitehead, what a remarkable partnership they created.

The Hungarian revolution came in 1956. The Freedom Fighters were at the ramparts of Budapest, breaking through the Iron Curtain of Soviet oppression. Angie was in Budapest, too-with Leo Cherne, delivering medical care to the wounded, guiding Cardinal Mindzenty to sanctuary, carrying the message home to an unforgettable rally at Madison Square Garden-telling the story of the triumph and tragedy of Hungary.

No American was more secure in the comforts and safety of our land than this consummate diplomat. But on freedom's battlefield, he was the citizen-soldier, facing the dangers of war and rebellion, opening the gates of hope for countless thousands of refugees seeking sanctuary in countries whose language they did not speak, their memories and treasures of the past shattered. Angier Biddle Duke was their protector, their friend, their spokesman in every chamber that had need to hear their voice: Vietnam, Hungary, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cuba, El Salvador, South Africa, Bosnia, Sarajevo. If there was a cry of anguish, he was there. Let freedom ring was his message-and all the hardships of the struggle, the sadness of loss, the exultation of freedom's triumph-they were all part of his life.

In his heroic work, Angie gained a clear sense of himself. He was so unusual-the older he became, the more energy, the more will to action he seemed to have. IRC staffers at every level knew him as a friend and colleague. He shared their dangers and never, never, never asked for priviledge. This extraordinary attitude made him admired and beloved by everyone who worked with him-at IRC, at Freedom House, the Council of American Ambassadors and all of the other groups that had the beneficence of his leadership.

The democracy of death cancels all differences among us. Only the impact of our character, the goodness of *our deeds, the pervasiveness of our love permits memory to survive. By these measures, Angie's memory is deeply rooted in our hearts. We must now set out to meet him in a hundred different places.

-- He will be standing with those who care for the wounded children of Bosnia.

-- He will be opening the door at the frontier where a refugee is seeking sanctuary and hope.

-- He will be watching over free elections in countless countries, teaching the meaning of democracy to all who will listen.

-- He will be praying for us-that we keep America strong and forever committed to the ideals of justice and fair ness for all our people. We will hear his wonderful laugh as he beckons us to the romance and adventure of life.

We hope you enjoy the Association's periodic newsletter and particularly the special tribute to Angier in this issue. We believe he would be proud of the Duke Family Association today, and, as one of the driving forces behind its establishment, would continue to work to keep it alive and flourishing.

As you know, the Association's original purpose was to bring various branches of the family together as one and celebrate our heritage. Over the years, the DFA has sponsored two family reunions, published this newsletter and served as a clearing house for family memorabilia and news. In today's world of electronic communication, it seems increasingly important to establish personal contact and we hope the Association can continue to promote reunions and gatherings in the years to come. We hope future generations of our family have the opportunity to understand their history and get to know each other.

However, the Association is not self-sustaining and it depends on the financial support of family members and friends to continue operating and publishing the newsletter. Any financial assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated and will enable us to continue providing you with family history, stories, news and information. Please help us keep the Association alive by sending your contribution to Duke Family Association, 341 Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708.

Thank you in advance for your support and we look forward to hearing from many of you in the months to come.

Sincerely,