Hoping to End Legal Wrangles, Duke Charity Picks President

NEW YORK â€”  Hoping to make a clear break from three years of controversy and legal wrangling, the board of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation finally will name its first president today--Joan Edelman Spero, undersecretary of State for economic and business affairs.

The appointment is the last step necessary before the foundation, which controls the $1.1-billion Duke fortune, can begin the business of giving away at least $17 million this year and $55 million each year after that--putting it in the same league with such well-known charities as the Carnegie and the Annenberg foundations.

“We start from ground zero,� Spero said, explaining that her first challenge is to translate the desire of Duke’s will--which called for the money to go to causes ranging from Islamic art to medical research--into one of the nation’s leading philanthropies.

“Doris Duke gave us some outlines,� Spero said. “I don’t mean to say this in a corny way, but [the goal is] to honor her memory.�

Part of the challenge also is to separate the foundation from the legal fighting that began when the 80-year-old tobacco heiress died on Oct. 28, 1993, at her home near Beverly Hills and named her butler executor of her estate.

Challengers from former Duke servants to major banks sought to overturn the will--some charging that Duke was murdered--setting off one of the nastiest probate fights in the nation’s history. Under a settlement reached last spring, the former butler, Bernard Lafferty, agreed to step aside in return for $4.5 million in executor fees and a yearly bequest of $500,000. But Lafferty enjoyed that wealth only a short time, dying in his sleep Nov. 4.

Spero, who will earn $400,000 a year as head of the New York-based foundation, obtained a doctorate in political science from Columbia University and served during the Carter administration as ambassador for economic and social affairs to the United Nations.

Spero said the foundation will comply with Duke’s wishes and make her estates in Honolulu and Newport, R.I., available to the public while also maintaining Duke Gardens, which for years have drawn visitors to the New Jersey property acquired by her father, James Buck Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Co.