- Description
We remember: Philanthropist Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, a member of the family that founded Duke University. She continued the Duke family tradition of contribution to the community, and was devoted to education, civil rights, the arts, women’s rights, and social justice. She was also a trustee at Duke University and of several family foundations, including the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation named for her mother. She died January 25, 2012 at the age of 91, in Durham, North Carolina
- Keywords:
- philanthropist
- Duke
- philanthropy
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SharkswithfrikingLazers 01/30/2012 06:08 PM Report
91 years, 51 years married to her second husband, seven children fathered by two different husbands, five names and can drop so many names she keeps Charlie on his toes.
What a life! May she now rest. In peace.
SharkswithfrikingLazers 01/30/2012 06:03 PM Report
"Heiress to a vast Gilded Age fortune built on tobacco"--tobacco and the Gilded Age and her Grandfather fought for the South and she worked on Civil Rights.
Yes, what generational wealth can generate and change.
SharkswithfrikingLazers 01/30/2012 05:56 PM Report
She moved to live with her grandmother at 14 and started Duke at age 15 and graduated with an art history degree in 1939.
A woman, in the 1930s, who did this as a teenager is quite remarkable. Of course, she had a life of great advantage but still a remarkable woman for being this intelligent, this mature, at this early age.
Richard_DeBiase 01/30/2012 12:37 PM Report
After watching this interview, it sounds like Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semens was very concerned about civil-liberties and racism. And she took steps to attack the sources in her time.
In her memory, I'd suggest defeating the greatest threat to civil-liberties and the greatest source of racism in our time. And that clearly is, the U.S. Drug War.