Exonian Profiles
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John Durante ’53 (Hon.): Traveling North
When Larry Durante ’53 was a student at the Academy, his father, John, faithfully attended all his son’s baseball and football games, driving the 287 miles north from his home in New York. “I don’t think I missed a game,” Durante, now 91, recalls. “I may have missed a couple of glee club concerts, but never a game.” Even after Larry’s tragic death from leukemia at the age of 28, his father remained close to the class of 1953 and to the Academy. Over the years, he continued to return to campus for reunions and other school events. He also maintained ongoing relationships with several of his son’s classmates, including Murray Peyton ’53, who describes John Durante as “a guy with a zest for life and a phenomenal memory who has maintained an unflagging interest in Exeter. He has never forgotten our class.” Peyton adds, “I am hoping to get him to Exeter for our 50th reunion.” Durante is particularly pleased to have been made an honorary member of his son’s class along with a legendary teacher. “Wells Kerr was elected to the class the same time I was, and I was honored to be in his company,” he says. “Kerr, Darcy Curwen, Bill and Helen Clark, Bill Saltonstall and Hammy Bissell were very important in Larry’s life at Exeter.” Durante says he first learned about Exeter and its rival Andover from boys’ books. “I read the Rover Boys, Tom Swift and Jack Armstrong, and the Academy appeared in some of them,” he recalls. Durante’s own childhood, however, was a far cry from that of his boyhood heroes. He was just 3 years old when he was sent to Mount Loretta, an orphanage on Staten Island. He spent the next 10 years there. There were 1,000 boys at the institution and very little reading material. “I read those few books over and over,” he says. “Instinctively, I became a partisan and always rooted for Exeter, even though I never realized where Exeter was or what it was all about until much later. When I finally visited there, when Larry became a student, it was much more than I ever expected.” It was a long and eventful trip for Durante from the playing fields of his imagination to the real football and baseball fields of Exeter. He left the orphanage at 13 and found himself on Houston Street in lower Manhattan. “I was physically ill,” he says. “It was so different from the quiet life at Mount Loretta.” But with pluck worthy of Tom Swift and Jack Armstrong, and with his own native optimism and intelligence, he managed to make his way in the hurly-burly city. Working as a ditch digger and a sanitation man—just two of his many jobs—he attended school, sometimes by day and sometimes at night. At the time of his retirement in 1991 at age 80, Durante had worked his way up to become the clerk of the Supreme Court in Queen’s County, NY, as well as a county clerk. But in his long life, it is his children who have brought Durante the most satisfaction. Larry Durante came to the attention of the father of Allen Fyles ’52, one of John Durante’s colleagues. John had become frustrated with the local schools, some of whose teachers were on strike. Father and son took the first of many trips north, for an admissions interview with Pike Rounds. Durante says, “When we got the note from him admitting Larry, we danced for joy. It was a dream come true.” Larry went on to Princeton and Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. While in medical school, he was selected to do research on malaria and tuberculosis. Before his death, he also worked in leper colonies and missionary hospitals in Africa. Durante is equally pleased by his daughter, Joan, who is a New York State Supreme Court judge. She is the longest-serving member of the court, having been on the bench for 28 years. As plans for the 50th reunion of the class of 1953 shape up, you can bet this honorary member will be packing his bag for yet another trip north. —Julie Quinn |
