Charles W. Duncan Jr., Energy Secretary in Oil Crisis, Is Dead at 96

NYT ^ | 10/18/22 | Robert D. McFadden

[Borges]

Charles W. Duncan Jr., who got into the energy business as a young Texas roustabout digging pipeline ditches in 1947, and at the height of America’s oil-shortage crisis in 1979 became President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of energy, died on Tuesday at his home in Houston. He was 96.

His son, Charles W. Duncan III, said the cause was complications of a recent fall.

Mr. Duncan was the scion of a Houston family that made a fortune in coffee. He turned the brand, Duncan Coffee, into a rival of Maxwell House before it was acquired by the Coca-Cola Company. He became the president of Coca-Cola, and in Atlanta got to know Georgia’s governor, Jimmy Carter. They liked each other and saw eye to eye on many forward-looking issues.

After Mr. Carter became president in 1977, he named Mr. Duncan deputy secretary of defense under Harold Brown. As deputy, Mr. Duncan notably asked Congress to end the ban on women in combat, raising the prospect of female volunteers flying fighter planes, joining infantry units and serving aboard destroyers and aircraft carriers — realities that were decades away.

[nascarnation]

Another instance where leftys with Platinum healthcare seem to go on almost forever..

[jdt1138]

Is this the guy that made federal speedlimit 55MPH ‘cause I can’t drive 55.