Secret Revealed: How Lowell became Duke

I get asked a lot about how I came to have a nickname. It’s a pretty good story, best told over a beer. But the short of it is that I hated the name Lowell. I was named after my dad’s twin brother (my middle name is my father’s, Lyle, which is also hated). I didn't hate my dad or my uncle, but I really did not like those names.

Since no-one could pronounce my last name, I began to dread the first day of school. The teacher would get to Diane Kaufman and invariably stumble over my unfamiliar firstname and my unpronounceable last. No one else seemed to mind my name. Indeed at Christmas they enjoyed singing, Lowell, Lowell as a substitute for Noel Noel. Needless to say, that is onme carole I do not sing come holiday season, although my kids wait for that moment at midnight Mass when the choir salutes me.

I was a fairly good tennis player and some team-mates called me Deuce, which may explain the roots for what occurred later. When in August, before departing for college, I received a letter from the Dean of Men at the University of Redlands inquiring about my background to match up with a room-mate, I took the opportunity to fill in the blank for nickname with “Duke.” All these years later it’s difficult to fully recall the process I went through. I do know that it took a couple of days and I told no one. Being a huge baseball fan, I actually chose it from a player I admired from the Los Angeles Dodgers, Duke Snider. Later I learned about Duke Ellington and John Duke Wayne, but I liked the sound of it. I sent the Dean's questionnaire back with my new name.

Much to my surprise I got a letter back a few days later in which Dean Ledbetter greeted me, much to the consternation of my father, with “Dear Duke… .” In September I arrived on campus and moved in to my dorm room. There was a knock on the door, my room-mate Paul Berger walked in and uttered the fateful words, “You must be Duke.” And, indeed, I was and have been ever since. The rest is, as they say, history.