[PRCo] Re: Passing of Donald Duke

[John Swindler]

I met Don only once - it was following the ERA convention in San Francisco around 1982.  We spent a day photographing the UP and SP  out in the desert near Cajon summit.  I also remember the orange trees growing in his back yard.  The morning orange juice could not get much fresher. 

It has been a hell of a two weeks - In addition to Barb, also lost a sergeant from my reserve unit that was mobilized for Desert Storm.  2010 has been a painful year.

John




> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Passing of Donald Duke
> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2010 15:17:11 -0400
> To: bvolkmer at bellsouth.net
> 
> What a hell of a week.
> First I get a phone call telling me that Ralph Ciccone, the secretary of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum work up last weekend and found his wife dead next to him of a heart attack.   That damn near killed us.   When my own wife had a stroke four years ago, Barb drove all the way from Pittsburgh to Lancaster just to visit her in a nursing home.   That created a real bond.   Caused my wife to go and work at the museum at Arden just to be with Barb.
> 
> And my old buddy Don.   Last summer I made a grand sweep of the USA.   Oh sure I wanted to see the the new Canada line in Vancouver and the new Seattle lines and the Gold in Los Angeles but the real reason was to see told friends that I met in Philadelphia in 1965 when I was a college kid.   The two?   William D. Middleton and Donald Norman Duke.   Both were suffering from cancer and we thought that would get them.   Little did I know that Don would die first of a heart attack.
> 
> I just got off the phone with Mike Patris, who, along with Steve Crise, will take over the business.   Unfortunaely, Mike was crying and talking and trying to drive on the freeway at the same time and we had to break off the call.   Don had spent all day Monday in the office with them.   He went home.   Apparently Steve Crise went over to meet him for dinner and found him passed out.   Steve called 9-1-1 but he was dead when the medics got there.
> 
> There is nothing yet in any newspapers because they all require a death certificate and Mike didn't have it yet.   
> 
> So Don told you to throw away your box camera, Bill, and get a 35mm camera?   He had one huge assortment of cameras himself.   You couldn't judge from the negatives in his collection because he acquired a lot of other collections and he borrowed cameras too.   In his early years he even used a borrowed postcard size roll film camera.   But Don also owned a 4x5 Speed Graphic or Crown Graphic, a 4x5 view camera  (most of his SP and Santa Fe steam pictures were on 4x5)  Later on some of his black and white was on 120 6x6 cm format 6x6 roll film camera ... probably a Rollei.   The examples I can think of were his final pictures of the Los Angeles streetcars in 1963 and some night pictures he took of PE's Long Beach line using open magnesium wire to provide illumination.  During the 35 years he and I palled around he always had a Nikon slung around his neck.   
> 
> The magnesium wire?   That has to be one of the craziest stores Don ever told me.   One of his buddies in the movie industry reminded Don (or explained to him) that the filament in a flash bulb was magnesium within an unsealed bulb.   A normal light bulb has the filament in a vacuum so that it doesn't burn.   But a photo flash bulb has a magnesium filament in oxygen so that it literally explodes.   So Don took several night pictures on PE using a huge coil of magnesium wire stretched along the ground.   He said the car battery was used to power it and the PE tracks were used for the return circuit.   He got several nice pictures.   I'm not sure what he took along to put out the brush fires!
> 
> He had a lot of great stories over the years I knew him.   Because his mother was involved in the movie studio school system for the L. A. School system, Don got to know a lot of the child starts.   He said he used to go along with Mom on Saturdays and play with the Little Rascals.   I never saw the pictures but he said that somewhere in the house there was a picture taken by the other child's mother of him playing with their daughter ... the other kid was Shirley Temple.   When you live in a city like Los Angeles, I guess you meet some famous people quite by accident.   Ward Kimble, the Disney animator who had the Grizzly Flat's Railroad in his back yard, was one of Don's friends.   Of course Ward was in the movie industry.   So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise when Don mentioned, "Oh yeah, I met Bob and Dolores Hope over at Ward's home one day."   Don took me to several meetings of the Los Angeles Corral of the Westerners ... a group whose members all had something to do!
>   with perpetuating western history or lore ... writers, publishers, actors, etc.   John Wayne was one of them.   
> 
> But last summer wasn't same.  He and I had tramped many places together between 1965 and 2010 from Portland to the deserts of Arizona, or Pittsburgh to Kansas in the heat of the summer.   But last June, Don wanted me to take him to ride the Gold line to East Los Angeles.   He had never ridden it.   So I picked him up, drove him over to the north end of the line and we made a round trip.   By the middle of the afternoon he was plumb tuckered out.    I was glad I had made the trip and I guess I was unwilling to recognize then that he was that close to the end.      
> 
> 
> On Oct 2, 2010, at 1:57 PM, bvolkmer wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > --- On Sat, 10/2/10, Interurbans <afishel at interurbans.com> wrote:
> > 
> > From: Interurbans <afishel at interurbans.com>
> > Subject: Passing of Donald Duke
> > To: "Interurbans " <afishel at interurbans.com>
> > Date: Saturday, October 2, 2010, 1:26 PM
> > 
> > From: Alan Weeks
> > 
> >  
> > I just learned a few hours ago that Don Duke passed away with a Heart Attack
> > 
> > on Monday evening. Hi was 81 years old. I first met Don while we worked at Mobil
> > 
> > Oil. He told me to throw away my Box Camera and get a 35 mm camera. I did
> > 
> > and was forever grateful. He took me along on Sundays while we photographed
> > 
> > the remainder of the Pacific Electric. I learned much from Don. Not too many
> > 
> > of us old timers left who knew and rode the P. E.
> > 
> >   
> > I believe Don ranked up there with Ira Sweet as a rail photographer and historian
> > 
> > and Author. He will be missed.
> > 
> >   
> > Alan
> > 
> >   
> > From: Michael Patris ent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 12:52 AM
> > To: Michael Patris
> > Subject: Passing of Donald Duke
> > 
> >   
> > Hello Friends,
> > 
> >  
> > It is with great sadness that I must report the passing of Donald Duke. He died this past Monday evening at his home, following a normal day at the office and talking about his next book project.
> > 
> >  
> > He had no problems to speak of and while he had finished testing with several doctors to confirm his cancer was gone just last week, following chemo and radiation earlier this year, he suffered a massive heart attack in the early evening.
> > 
> >  
> > Duke did not want any funeral or memorial services, but there has been talk of a memorial of some type in the coming weeks. As details become known, I will get out the word.
> > 
> >  
> > Enjoy the attached image of Duke taken by Steve Crise a few years ago when the 3751 was at Union Station.
> > 
> >  
> > Best wishes to you all and God Bless Duke.
> > 
> >  
> > Michael Patris
> > 
> > <Duke.tif>
> 
> 
>