[Deathwatch] Robert David Lion Gardiner, heir of Gardiner's Island,93

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Robert Gardiner
By Robert F. Worth

August 30, 2004

Lord of his own island; 93

Robert David Lion Gardiner, the last heir to bear the name of the
family that has owned Gardiner's Island, off the coast of Long Island,
for nearly four centuries, died Aug. 23 at his home in East Hampton,
N.Y. He was 93.

Mr. Gardiner's death was announced by Jeanne Toomey, a friend and
former press representative.

Mr. Gardiner called himself "the 16th Lord of the Manor" and saw
himself as a custodian of his family's history on what is said to be
the largest privately owned island in the world. Although Mr.
Gardiner's wealth and social position was overshadowed by that of the
tycoons and Hollywood celebrities who colonized Long Island over the
past century, he delighted in reminding them of who had arrived first.

"The Fords, the du Ponts, the Rockefellers, they are nouveaux riches,"
Mr. Gardiner told an interviewer in the mid-1990s.

Mr. Gardiner lived in East Hampton, in an opulent family house with its
own long history, but his heart was rooted in Gardiner's Island, in the
bay off Long Island's south fork. The island's 3,350 acres includes 27
miles of coastline, forests and streams, and buildings dating from the
17th century.

It has been in the family since his ancestor, the English settler Lion
Gardiner, bought it from the Montaukett Indians in 1639 for "one large
dog, one gun, some powder and shot, some rum and several blankets,
worth in all about Five Pounds sterling."

He also obtained a charter from King Charles I of England. Captain Kidd
once buried treasure there, and the family withstood several attacks by
pirates. Someone accused of being a witch once lived on the island, as
did Julia Gardiner, who became the wife of President John Tyler and was
known in her youth as "the rose of Long Island."

Although the island is strictly off limits to the public, Mr. Gardiner
took occasional groups of visitors there in his boat, the Laughing
Lady, often surprising them by talking about Colonial-era events as
though they had happened the day before.

For the past three decades, Mr. Gardiner feuded with his niece,
Alexandra Gardiner Creel Goelet, who owned the island jointly with him.
He often accused Goelet and her husband, Robert G. Goelet, of plotting
to sell or develop the island after his death, a charge they vehemently
denied.

Mr. Gardiner, who married in 1961 but had no children, tried
unsuccessfully during the 1980s to adopt a distant relative as his
heir, to whom he could bequeath his share of the island.

Mr. Gardiner was born Feb. 25, 1911, in New York, and attended St.
George's School in Newport, R.I. He graduated from Columbia University
in 1934 and attended New York University Law School. In World War II,
he served as a Navy lieutenant and saw action in the South Pacific.

After the war, he worked on Wall Street at the Empire Trust Co. His
father died when he was young, and he lived in Manhattan with his
mother until he was in his late 40s. In 1961, he married Eunice Bailey
Oakes, a British former model many years his junior, at St. Thomas
Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Eighteen ushers in top hats and
tails took part in the ceremony. His wife survives him.

Mr. Gardiner once estimated his personal wealth at $135 million; his
assets included a 42-acre shopping center. He served for many years on
the Suffolk County Planning Board, and ran unsuccessfully as a
Democratic candidate for the state Senate in 1960.

Mr. Gardiner and his sister Alexandra Gardiner Creel inherited the
island from their aunt, Sarah Diodati Gardiner, on her death in 1953.
It had nearly passed out of family hands two decades earlier, after a
spendthrift cousin was unable to maintain it. Sarah Gardiner bought it
in 1937 for $400,000, just before it was to be put up for sale at
public auction.

Mr. Gardiner's aunt left a trust fund to pay for the island's upkeep,
but by the late 1970s it had run out of money. Mr. Gardiner already had
quarreled with his sister and her daughter over the island, and when
his niece's husband, Robert Goelet, began paying the rising costs, Mr.
Gardiner refused to pay half.

He said at the time that he was trying to force the island into
receivership by New York state, which he hoped would take care of it as
a historic site. His relatives went to court, and in 1980, Judge Marie
Lambert of state Surrogate Court barred Mr. Gardiner from visiting the
island.

Mr. Gardiner appealed the decision, and in 1992, a state appeals court
ruled that as an heir he could not be denied the use of the island. He
began visiting it regularly again, always avoiding the Goelets, with
whom he continued to feud, and still refusing to help pay the estimated
$1.8 million yearly costs for the island's upkeep.

His sister died in 1990. Mr. Gardiner's feud with his niece was far
from the family's only quarrel over the island, which Alexandra
Goelet's father had called "the sandbar of sorrow." Over the years,
there had been several legal confrontations over its ownership, said
Joseph Attinito, Mr. Gardiner's lawyer.

Now Alexandra Goelet is expected to become the owner of the island. She
has two children.

Although Mr. Gardiner had hoped to be buried on the island in a tomb
like his grandfather's, a replica of that of the Roman emperor Sextus
Africanus, Attinito said he would be buried near his parents in an East
Hampton cemetery.