Perry Duryea

Infobox Person
name = Perry Belmont Duryea, Jr.


caption =
birth_date = birth date|1921|10|18
birth_place = Montauk, New York, U.S.
death_date = death date and age|2004|1|11|1921|10|18
death_place = Southampton, New York, U.S.
death_cause = Car accident
spouse = Marie Therese Duryea
children = two
footnotes =

Perry Belmont Duryea, Jr. (October 18, 1921 Montauk, Suffolk County, New York - January 11, 2004 Southampton, Suffolk County, New York) was an American politician.

Life

His father ran a wholesale seafood business, Perry B. Duryea and Son, Inc., in Montauk. He attended East Hampton High School and graduated from Colgate University in 1942.

He attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy as a pilot of the U.S. Naval Air Transport Service, and entered the family business full-time after World War II.

Duryea began his career in public service as a member of the Montauk Public School Board of Education. He was President of the Long Island State Park Commission, Bethpage Park Authority, Jones Beach State Parkway Authority from 1963 to 1969, and a member of the Board of Trustees of Colgate University and Dowling College.

He was a Republican member from Suffolk County of the New York State Assembly from 1961 to 1978, was minority leader from 1966 to 1968, Speaker from 1969 to 1974, and minority leader again from 1975 to 1978. After the Watergate scandal the Republicans lost their majority in the Assembly, and Duryea remains to date the last Republican Speaker. Duryea was active in fighting against development of eastern Long Island including a successful fight in 1967 to stop plans to turn the Grumman Assembly Plant in Calverton, New York into the fourth major airport in metropolitan New York City.

He was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1967, and a member of New York Republican State Central Committee in 1968.

In 1978, he was the Republican candidate for Governor of New York, but lost to the incumbent Hugh Carey.

He died at Southampton Hospital as the result of injuries suffered in a car accident, and was buried at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Montauk.

He had two children: Perry "Chip" Duryea III and Lynn Duryea.

A New York State office building in Islip, Long Island, is named for him.

ources

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E0D61530F930A25752C0A9629C8B63] Obit in NYT on January 13, 2004
* [http://www4.colgate.edu/scene/mar2004/duryea.html] Colgate Obituary
*"Suffolk Jetport Seen at an Impasse" in NYT on March 22, 1967
* [http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/durkee-duval.html] Political Graveyard

External links

* [http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/apap084.htm] Finding Aid for the Papers of Perry B. Duryea, Jr.
* [http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/] M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives