Duane Lockard, professor of politics, emeritus, of Princeton University, died on June 19, 2006, from complications from Parkinson's disease. He was born in the poor coal-mining town of Owings, West Virginia; and, by the time he was eight, the Great Depression had increased his community's poverty. One of his childhood chores was to collect lumps of coal that fell from passing ore trains so his family could have heat in their house. As a teenager, he pumped gas at a filling station and, for a time, followed his father into the dark depths of the mines. Although the older men were kind to him, he found it oppressive to work in pitch blackness, hunched over in the small rooms carved out by pickaxes. In an effort to escape, he tried to enroll in Fairmont State Teachers College, planning to live at home and hitchhike the 18 miles to the school. Alas, when he tried to register, he could muster only half of the $30 tuition fee. Fortunately for future generations of scholars and students, a compassionate and perceptive dean recognized talent and allowed him to matriculate.
Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Duane joined what was then called the Army Air Corps. Because of his intelligence and motor skills, he became a pilot, flying C-47s, twin-engined transport planes. Emboldened by his rise in status, he married the love of his life, Beverly White, a social worker. If theirs was not a marriage made in heaven, it would have qualified as the product of marvelous karma. But their initial days together would be short. Soon he was in England preparing for D Day. The hours before H-Hour on June 6, 1944, found him towing gliders into Normandy. After the beachhead was secure, he continued piloting flights to resupply troops in France and later participated in the ill-fated effort to trap German forces by dropping a large force of parachutists into the Netherlands. Years later, he reviewed Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge too Far. Focusing on General Bernard Montgomery's arrogant folly in planning and executing the operation, Duane entitled the essay, “An Ego too Large.” He later left in Princeton's library an unpublished manuscript that modestly described his experiences during the war in an unarmed but often flak-riddled aircraft.
After his discharge as a captain, Duane used the GI Bill to attend Yale, where he remained until he had completed his doctorate, studying under V. O. Key. His first book, New England State Politics (Princeton University Press, 1961), was modeled on Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation. While a graduate student, he taught at Wesleyan University and then spent 10 years on the faculty of Connecticut College. While there, he deepened his knowledge of practical politics by running for, and being elected to, the state legislature. In 1965, Princeton wooed him away. He spent his next 20 years there, living with his wife Beverly on the edge of the campus, and chairing the department of politics from 1969–1972. His most notable acquisition in that role was Sheldon Wolin, whom Duane persuaded to leave the University of California. More generally, his chairmanship was marked by an ability to keep peace and even a great degree of harmony among disputatious prima donnas. He likened his role to that of a diplomat operating within a system of powerful and independent nations that saw their interests as conflicting. On rare occasions, they were correct.
When, in 1984, he opted for early retirement, he explained to surprised colleagues that he had developed Parkinson's disease and wanted to leave while people were asking why he was retiring and before they began wondering why he was not doing so. His concern was real, though ungrounded, as a glance at his scholarly record would have revealed. In addition to several edited volumes, his books include: Connecticut's Challenge Primary: A Study in Legislative Politics (McGraw-Hill, 1960); The New Jersey Governor: A Study in Political Power (Van Nostrand, 1964); Toward Equal Opportunity: A Study of State and Local Anti-Discrimination Laws (Macmillan, 1968); American Federalism (McGraw-Hill, 1969); The Perverted Priorities of American Politics (Macmillan, 1970); and The Politics of State and Local Government (3rd ed, Macmillan, 1981). A recurrent theme in many of these and his writings after retirement was a concern for social justice, a fear that the American political system was advancing the interests of the wealthy while failing to protect the needs of poorer people.
The Perverted Priorities became a best seller and the royalties allowed him and his wife to purchase a cottage on Cape Cod, to which they escaped during summers and any academic vacations that lasted more than a few days. It was to that cottage that he and Beverly retired in 1984, expecting a reasonably happy life. But that was not to be. Beverly was soon stricken with a virulent form of cancer and died within a few months. His three daughters, Jay, Leslie, and Linda, remained close emotionally if not geographically, with Linda giving up her own career to care for him when his Parkinson's worsened.
Despite declining health, Duane continued to write and, until he lost his coordination in his hands and fingers, to paint and garden. Much of his writing consisted of poems. Although he allowed an occasional piece to be published, he circulated most of these only among family and close friends. His final book appeared in 1998. It was a mixture of scholarship and reminiscences, as its title indicates: Coal: A Memoir and a Critique (University Press of Virginia). That work offers a careful analysis of the rapacious greed of the owners of West Virginia's mines, people who happily sacrificed miners' lives to fatten their own profits. In part, however, the book is also a tribute to the miners themselves. On a daily basis, they risked being buried alive by cave-ins; and Black Lung Disease constantly festered in the soot of the narrow, inky, corridors. But wives and children needed to eat, and these men sacrificed their lives for their families. In particular, Duane focused on his father, a miner whom he had come to understand to be a formidable, though quiet, hero.
Most people outside of Princeton knew Duane as a scholar. Because of that reputation, he was awarded a Ford Faculty Professorship, a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship. His students and colleagues shared this respect for his scholarship, but they also knew him as a dedicated teacher, a kind, concerned, mentor, and a warm, gentle, friend, who also happened to be a superb soldier-aviator.
