EL SALVADOR: Popular Diplomat

In the soft-lighted corners of El Morocco, or in the sun of Southampton Beach, the talk grows nostalgic and just a little pained when someone mentions Angier Biddle Duke. “Somehow,” a handsome young person will say, “I always expected something like this from Angie.”

In the good old days, Tobacco Heir “Angie” Duke was the favorite of society columnists. At his Southampton estate, playfully known as the Duke Box, Hedy Lamarr and Jimmy Stewart used to rub bronzed elbows with Henry Ford II, and some of Manhattan’s tonier artists went swimming with visiting English Tittes. But Angie (who worked his way up from private to major in World War II) started brooding about a career.

Ambassador Stanton Griffis took him along to Buenos Aires and Madrid as a sort of social secretary. So enthusiastically did Angie cotton to the diplomatic life that last year Harry Truman appointed him

Ambassador to El Salvador. There, to the vast astonishment of Southampton, El Morocco and the Department of State, he has proved himself one of the best am bassadors the U.S. has ever sent to Latin America.

Angie rolled up the French cuffs on his monogrammed English shirt and set out to make friends high & low. He always got to his office at 8 a.m. He traveled to villages where no American had ever been seen before, delivered speeches in good Spanish before civic groups, labor unions and schoolchildren at the rate of two a week.”He has dedicated more sewers, slaughterhouses and clinics than a half-dozen politicians,” wrote one admiring Salvadoran newspaperman. Once, when he turned up at a dinner celebrating the opening of a library in dusty Suchitoto (pop. 10,619), he called in the cook, asked her to dance with him.

When twice-divorced Angie Duke be came a Roman Catholic and married the beautiful granddaughter of a Spanish mar quis, their delight with “El Duque” was complete. It was not unusual for President Oscar Osorio himself to drive up unannounced to the embassy and take potluck luncheon with the Dukes.

Ambassador Duke spent the night after the U.S. election writing letters to Republican Senators, pleading to be kept on.

Nevertheless, Washington decided to let him go. This week, at 37 still the youngest ambassador in U.S. history, Angie Duke surrenders his post to former State Department Press Chief Mike McDermott.

In San Salvador, there were farewell banquets and tearful speeches. At El Mo rocco the question was: Would the prodi gal return? His old friends were doubtful.

As they heard it, Angie was dead serious about this diplomatic thing, was trying his best to get another diplomatic job.