Dad invested in real estate; his banker son survived the Andrea Doria disaster.
Clarence H. Gifford, Sr. (1889-1977)
Clarence H. Gifford, Jr. (1913-2004)
On the foggy night of July 25, 1956, the 697-foot Andrea Doria, a luxury ocean liner dubbed “a floating art gallery” for its priceless array of Rembrandts, tapestries, jewels, and a life-size statue of its 16th-century namesake, Admiral Doria, was steaming off the coast of Nantucket, bound for New York Harbor. Clarence H. “Bud” Gifford, Jr., a partner in his father’s New York real estate business, his wife, Wink, and four children were among the 1,134 passengers onboard.
Earlier that evening, the 524-foot Swedish passenger liner Stockholm had set sail from New York on a voyage to its homeport of Gothenburg.
Shortly before 11:10 p.m., the ships’ commanding officers suddenly realized they were on a collision course. One of the officers had misread his radar and inadvertently steered his ship toward the other. The Andrea Dorea’s captain spotted the Stockholm’s lights through the thick curtain of fog just as one of his men cried, “She’s coming right at us!”
The Doria’s captain ordered a hard turn to port, but it was too late. The collision snapped the bulkhead and battered a 30-foot gaping hole in the Doria’s starboard side.
Bud and Wink were in their cabin when they felt a tremendous jolt, and a glass of milk by the bed shot across the room. They frantically rounded up their children. As the boats radioed for help, Bud ushered Wink and the kids to the sloping deck and said tearful goodbyes. “They went into boats with the other women and children,” Bud recalled in a newspaper interview. “I waited about an hour and a half, and there were people from below decks coming up, covered with oil, screaming. Then it was the men’s turn, and I went down that sloping deck.”
When he saw blazing lights and letters reading Ile De France—the name of the ship that rescued them—it was “just about the finest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” Bud said.
In the collision and its aftermath, 46 passengers and five crew members died; 1,655 people were saved. Today the Andrea Doria lies in 225 feet of water at the bottom of the Atlantic, and is referred to as the “Mount Everest of scuba diving.”
Bud’s father, Clarence Hamilton Gifford, Sr., was a son of Aaron H. Gifford and the former Mary Collins. He was a native of Sardis, Kentucky, and a member of the first graduating class at Eastern Kentucky University in 1909. He became a teacher in Guthrie, Kentucky, and then a high school principal in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
In 1911, Clarence married the former Vera Bailey. In addition to their son Bud, they had a daughter, Elaine, who went on to found the Volunteers Bureau of the Louisville Community Chest—now the United Way. During World War I, Clarence was entertainment director for the Navy.
In 1934, Clarence established and became president of C. H. Gifford Real Estate company in Katonah, in Westchester County, where he lived in an orchard. In 1944, he married the former Marjorie Otis, a musician born in Tivoli, New York, who was 20 years his junior.
At age 16, Marjorie moved to New York City to study the piano and organ with renowned teachers. After working as a choirmaster in several churches (who were bold enough to hire a woman in a traditional man’s position), she started teaching music in private schools, including Nightingale-Bamford and The Lenox School in Manhattan. In 1938, her students at The Lenox School put on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a two-act operetta for which she wrote the music and lyrics. Antoinette Perry, for whom the Tony Awards were named, was the director.
Marjorie taught for 19 years at the Rippowam School in Bedford before retiring in 1966. She then started a music program at the Bedford and Taconic Correctional Facilities. Working as a volunteer, she taught voice and piano, acted as choirmaster, and became a mentor to the inmates.
Clarence, too, had a strong sense of social responsibility. He served as vice president of the Bethlehem Association, executive secretary of the Drama League of America, and was a promoter of the annual Caramoor Music Festival in Katonah.
He was extremely devoted to his Kentucky alma mater, which awarded him the Outstanding Alumnus Award at his 50-year reunion in 1959 and an honorary doctorate in 1971. He established three Eastern Kentucky University scholarships and was admitted to the Eastern Kentucky Hall of Distinguished Alumni. He died in 1977 from cancer at age 88. Marjorie died in 2003.
Clarence’s son, Bud, graduated from Peekskill Military Academy in 1932 and Brown University in 1936, paying his way through college by working as a waiter in Providence, Rhode Island. When he graduated, he joined his father’s real estate business, then served in the U.S. Navy.
Bud married Priscilla Marshall “Wink” Kilvert in 1937. Born in Providence, she was a direct descendant of one of Rhode Island’s founding families, the Browns. She attended the Gordon School in Providence and the Oldfields School in Maryland. She later studied art and history in Florence, Italy. Bud and Wink’s four children included Priscilla (“Bambi”), Chad, Kilvert (“Dun”), and Jock.
In 1948, Bud joined the Phoenix Bank in Providence, which merged with Rhode Island Hospital Trust in 1963. He was president and chairman of the board from 1963 to 1974, when he retired. He and Wink had homes on Nantucket and in Key Largo, Florida.
Rather than live in fear after their disastrous experience on the Andrea Doria, Wink became a world traveler, visiting more than 30 countries. She cruised every ocean, toured Antarctica twice, and traveled across the Soviet Union by train twice. Every year, the Giffords got together on Nantucket to mark the anniversary of their ill-fated 1956 voyage.
In 1999, Bud and Wink’s granddaughter A.J. Mleczko Griswold won an Olympic gold medal in ice hockey. Bud and Wink funded a community ice rink in Nantucket, which opened in July 2002.
Chad described his father Bud this way: “He had an incredible curiosity and was as comfortable talking to the Queen of England as he was to the newest recruit at a bank he was running himself.” Bud had an extensive wine cellar in his Nantucket home and wrote a book on wine lore, One Man’s Wine, published in 2000. He received an honorary doctor of enology degree from Johnson & Wales.
Bud was a director of the toy company Hasbro and Textron, which owns Bell Helicopter and Cessna Aircraft. He died in 2004, and Wink died a year later.
Clarence H. Gifford, Sr. established the fund in The New York Community Trust, which has helped many charitable causes.