Carl I. Duncan Jr. (BS ’49, Marketing) made the most of his time at The University of Tulsa, excelling in his business classes and establishing enduring friendships through his participation in Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. The organization will always mean a great deal to him because it enabled him to hone his leadership skills while forging friendships with his fraternity brothers.
Duncan Jr.’s connection to TU and Lambda Chi Alpha runs deep; his father, the late Carl I. Duncan Sr., served as a top administrator at TU from 1928 until 1957 and was the sole financial officer during most of that period, fulfilling the duties of business manager and secretary-treasurer of the Board of Trustees.
Duncan, Sr. was born in Higbee, Missouri, and graduated from Missouri Valley College in Marshall. He took graduate courses at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and at the University of Illinois. Duncan served in the U.S. Army during the First World War and was a member of the famed Rainbow Division in France. The Rainbow Division was so christened by U.S. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker when he assembled the 42nd Infantry because it represented regiments from 26 states, embracing a territory from coast to coast. Duncan Sr. served with the 117th Ammunition Train out of Kansas. The division was selected to be among the first to arrive in France. The “Rainbow” was the first to take over a complete divisional sector of front-line trenches, and it held it longer than any other division.
After the war, Duncan Sr. was employed by a bank in Marshall, Missouri, and he later served as business manager at Missouri Valley College. He joined the TU staff in 1928 as business manager and retired in 1957 as the treasurer in the University Controller’s office. During his long career at TU, Duncan advised and supported many student activities, including TU’s student newspaper, The Collegian, and the school yearbook, the Kendallabrum. He also was instrumental in the founding of TU’s Epsilon Upsilon chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha in 1937 and served as chairman of the fraternity advisory council.
Following his retirement, Duncan Sr. continued to serve TU as a consultant. He received the Order of Merit of Lambda Chi Alpha during the fraternity’s mortgage-burning ceremony in 1961 and was named TU’s “Mr. Homecoming” in 1963. Duncan Sr. died in 1972, and the following year his widow, Marguerite G. Duncan, established The Carl I. Duncan Scholarship for Lambda Chi Alpha in his memory. Since then, this endowed scholarship has supported the members of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and benefited from the financial contributions of brothers old and new.
In 2014, an unexpected gift from the Philip Wade Trust bolstered the scholarship fund and raised a prime example of good deeds coming full circle. Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Carl Duncan Sr. had helped a young and struggling Wade (and several others in similar circumstances) find work that paid his way through TU. Wade went on to complete his degree and distinguish himself in the petroleum industry where he eventually joined the senior executive team of Exxon. Though neither man lived to see the 2014 disbursement, the thoughtfully planned support was both an eloquent commemoration of past kindness and a sound investment in tomorrow’s leaders.
Duncan Jr. expressed his loyalty to TU through gifts supporting the renovation of the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity House and to scholarship and endowment funds, including the fund that memorializes his father, The Carl I. Duncan Scholarship Fund for Lambda Chi Alpha.
In 2013, Duncan Jr. established a planned gift that would strengthen his father’s existing endowed scholarship fund and create another endowment at TU, The Carl I. Duncan Jr. Lambda Chi Alpha Endowment Fund for House Improvements. Carl Duncan Jr. passed away in 2022, but his affinity for his alma mater and his fraternity will be sustained by his namesake endowment fund and that of his father.
