Talk:Roy S. Durstine

Daughters, first marriage
None of the sources say anything about Durstine's first marriage, and his ex-wife is named in the daughters' wedding announcements only by her new husband's name. I contemplated adding a bit about one daughter's early widowhood (her first husband was KIA in WW2) and quick remarriage thereafter, but lacking any evidence that either daughter was notable in her own right, I decided against it. 121a0012 (talk) 19:05, 28 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Kathrine Sarles Magee (née Durstine) was born March 2, 1921, and died June 23, 2006, per this obit; it gives her mother's name as Harriet Hutchins Durstine, so that puts a bound on Durstine's first marriage. According to, which appears to be WP:UGC and in any case cites no references, Durstine married Harriet H. Hutchins on November 12, 1912, and they divorced shortly before his marriage to Gardiner in 1932. That page claims Roy and Harriet had three daughters, although it doesn't name them. It also gives Durstine's mother's name as Kathrine Sarles, which helps to explain the unusual spelling of the daughter's name. Not sure if any of this can be used, in the absence of better sources. 121a0012 (talk) 04:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I was able to track down some reliable sources for the first Mrs. Durstine, including her correct middle name. It's not entirely clear from the Times, but it appears that Harriet Grosvenor Hutchins is not the same woman as the Broadway and film actress Harriet Hutchins. 121a0012 (talk) 03:45, 3 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Find A Grave (WP:UGC) gives Deborah Ann's dates as 1914–1973 . NYT articles already cited confirm that she married a fellow named Richardson. 121a0012 (talk) 05:38, 4 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Harriet Celia's dates are given as 1917–1960 by 207.180.169.36 (talk) 06:35, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Bio reference
There is a bio of Durstine in The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising but Google Books only shows the table of contents, not the actual biography. 121a0012 (talk) 04:52, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Got this from the library, and it says nothing of any value about his personal life or how his last firm fared. It does contain biographies of Barton and Osborn as well as Durstine, so there may be some more material in the stories of his business partners. 121a0012 (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The Columbia Center for Oral History Research has an oral history interview with Durstine, but unfortunately it does not seem to be one of the ones which has been digitized. 121a0012 (talk) 05:01, 2 March 2022 (UTC)


 * It turns out that it actually is available (or at least was to me), not sure why I didn't find it before. There's lots of rambling about his time at the Sun, his time working on the Roosevelt campaign and several other political campaigns (including Barton's U.S. House and Senate campaigns), but very little about the actual business of any of his agencies.  I added one bit about why (he said) he left BBDO in 1939, for which this seems to be the only reliable source. 121a0012 (talk) 01:14, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The Mirror Makers, a 1980s popular monograph on the history of the advertising industry, mentions Durstine a few times but with little detail. (In general the book has little biographical detail, concentrating more on industry trends and changes in the media that affected advertising practices.) 121a0012 (talk) 05:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)