Robin Chandler Duke

Robin Chandler Duke, 92, a silent partner in the ownership of the Stowe Reporter with her son, Biddle Duke, died Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, in Charleston, S.C.

She was a champion of women’s health and reproductive rights, a corporate executive and board member for some of the nation’s largest companies, a journalist and a former U.S. ambassador.

She was born Grace Esther Tippett in Baltimore, Md., Oct. 13, 1923. Duke, ever practical and pragmatic, changed her name to Robin Chandler when she was a young news broadcaster in New York in the 1940s.

Duke began her working life at age 16; in New York, she and her sister supported themselves and their mother. Duke was a floorwalker in department stores in New York and was a model at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.

In the 1940s, Duke began her career in journalism as a panelist on an early television talk show, “Leave It to the Girls.” She was a reporter at the New York Journal American in 1944-46 before marrying Warner Brothers’ actor Jeffrey Lynn and moving to Los Angeles.

Returning to the East Coast in the 1950s with two children, Jeffrey and Letitia, Duke worked at the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia and as an anchor on NBC’s “Today” Show with Dave Garroway, where she covered the 1952 Democratic National Convention. Duke divorced Lynn in 1958.

Duke became disillusioned with short employment contracts for women in broadcast news and its show-business aspect so she began studying finance. In the mid-1950s, she became one of the first women stockbrokers on Wall Street, working the commodities desk for Orvis Brothers (1953-58), where she was a leading sugar trader for Pepsi Cola. Pepsi eventually hired her away as vice president of international public relations (1958-62). At Pepsi Cola, Duke led a four-month tour of West Africa with Louis Armstrong and his band. She and Armstrong became lifelong friends.

In 1959, she helped orchestrate the placement of Pepsi in the hands of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and then Vice President Richard Nixon while on a state visit to Moscow. The photo included the marketing slogan “Be sociable, have a Pepsi.”

While arranging an exhibit of Peruvian Inca gold at the Pepsi building on Park Avenue, she met Angier Biddle Duke. They married in 1962 and lived in Washington, D.C., where he was chief of protocol for President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Duke’s family made its fortune in tobacco and founded Duke University and Duke Energy.

Following the death of JFK, Duke worked alongside her husband, who was ambassador to Spain, Denmark and Morocco before moving to London. There, Duke became co-chair of Population Action International (1975-96), formed in response to the growing economic and environmental challenges of the global population explosion.

Duke became a trustee of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and president of the National Abortion Rights Action League’s Pro-Choice America and the National Abortion Rights Action Committee and consultant for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. She spent 30 years advocating for women’s access to birth control, family planning, family health care and education.

Duke was an ardent Democrat and a proud New Yorker. She loved to ski and skied Stowe on and off for much of her life.

Duke was a board member, trustee and chair of numerous corporate, foundation and organization boards, including the U.N. Association of the United States, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockwell International, American Home Products Corp., International Flavors and Fragrances, Emigrant Savings Bank, Worldwatch Institute, Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, Millennium David and Lucile Packard Foundation, US-Japan Foundation, World Affairs Council and the advisory board of the Tolstoy Foundation, among many others.

Duke was a longstanding member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2000, Duke was appointed ambassador to Norway by President Clinton.

Duke received many awards but was most proud of the Mary Lasker Social Service Award (1991) and Planned Parenthood Federation’s Margaret Sanger Award (1997).

Survivors include three children, Jeffrey Lynn of Vero Beach, Fla., Tish Lynn of Charleston, and Biddle Duke and wife Idoline of Stowe; two stepchildren, Marilu Duke Cluett of Moretown and Dario Duke of Wenatchee, Wash.; four grandchildren, Maggie and Nick Valiunas and Ellie and Angie Duke; and many friends and admirers.

A celebration of her life will be held in New York later in the year. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to NARAL Pro-Choice America at prochoiceamerica.org.