Robert K. Durkee, a Princeton University graduate who returned to his alma mater to advise university presidents, is retiring from his job as vice president and secretary in 2019, university officials announced on Sept. 24.
Durkee will leave at the end of the academic year, winding down a 47-year career that started in 1972, university officials said. His retirement will occur the same year as his 50th college reunion, which the 1969 Princeton graduate is due to celebrate.
“For my four years as an undergraduate and my 47 years in Nassau Hall, Princeton has given me almost daily opportunities to learn, to grow and to work with students, faculty, staff, alumni, presidents, trustees, neighbors and others to help shape and strengthen this university, in support of the values for which it stands,” Durkee said in a statement. “For this I am deeply grateful.”
Durkee will be succeeded by Hilary Parker, the chief of staff to Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgrubrer, who said in a statement that Durkee had “rendered incomparable service to this university.”
Durkee outlasted most of the five presidents he advised, starting with the now late Robert F. Goheen. A 1973 article from the Princeton Alumni Weekly, the alumni magazine, recalled how Durkee, then in his 20s, had come to Princeton after working as a public school teacher in Trenton. The story indicated Durkee had expected to stay at Princeton for three years and then go on to something else — an estimate that was off by 44 years.
“Bob Durkee will be a very hard act to follow,” former Princeton mayor and fellow Princeton alumnus Richard Woodbridge said on Sept. 24. “He has served as the voice of Nassau Hall for so long that many think of him as Mr. University. Bob communicated clearly in a calm, deep voice and had the rare ability to keep his cool under fire. It’s a gift. Even more important than making speeches was Bob’s willingness to listen carefully and make constructive suggestions. A very talented gentleman has left an indelible positive mark on Princeton, the town, and Princeton, the university.”
“Bob has been like a fixture of the university in its relationship with the town,” Mayor Liz Lempert said on Sept. 24. “He’s also a resident of Princeton too, which I think is a really important perspective to have at Nassau Hall.”
Durkee came to Princeton from Staten Island, N.Y., where he went to high school. In college, he worked at the student paper, the Daily Princetonian, and made a big splash with a story in 1967 in which he reported Goheen saying it was “inevitable” that the then all-male school would be going co-educational. Princeton’s decision to move in that direction touched Durkee’s life directly as the father of three daughters who eventually would follow him to Princeton.