Jacket and interior design, composition, prepress, andproduction management by Joe Gannon, Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.
Anthony Drexel Duke wasborn into three prominent American families—the Dukes of North Carolina and theDrexels and Biddles of Philadelphia—but from his birth on July 28, 1918, he hascharted his own course. It has been an eventful and often surprising journey—anearly epic tale of world war and high adventure, grandeur and poverty,personal struggle and unflagging good will. In Uncharted Course, Tony tells the stories of his life: Growing up inthe wake of his father's accidental drowning when he was five; being part of acolorful family surrounded with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Mayor JimmyWalker, Irving Berlin, Gene Tunney, and the future President John F. Kennedy;his six-year Navy career during which he commanded, at age twenty-five, anamphibious ship—his beloved USS LST 530—that landed thousands of men on thebeaches of Normandy and Okinawa; his four marriages that produced elevenchildren; and, of course, the complete history of his life's work: Boys &Girls Harbor, the highly lauded educational institution that began with Tony atage 19 setting up a camp for half a dozen disadvantaged boys in Southampton,Long Island, in 1937. Seventy years later, The Harbor is an East Harlem andEast Hampton institution that has touched the lives of literally tens ofthousands of young people and has been hailed as a great American successstory. In this thoughtful, candid, and highly entertaining memoir, Tony Dukeregales us with the voyage of his life—so far.