Other Events and Attributes:

• Census: 1920, Julien, Dubuque, Iowa
• Census: 1940, Washington, District of Columbia
• Census: 1950, Asan, Guam

Notes:

From “Marblehead Community” — December 14, 2000.

Marblehead man not afraid to make waves at sea
By Stephen Decatur, Special to the reporter

 We who live in Marblehead are fortunate to be surrounded by a fascinating universe. But never mind the harbor, the boats, the wonderful architecture and the myriad other things: one of the most important aspects of this town is its people.
Today we meet a man who has demonstrated a wide range of talents: captain of the world’s largest sailing yacht (though it had no masts at the time), friend of one of this country’s great black artists, governor of the island of Guam, resident of Paris every summer, and owner of a good measure of social conscience.
 Carlton Skinner is our man. Born in California and educated at a venerable New England prep school, he now resides in Marblehead. After college he went to work for the Wall Street Journal. Later he almost joined the Republicans in Spain fighting the fascists during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. He decided against it, however, because he disapproved of the behavior of the Communists who had infiltrated the anti-fascist forces allied against Franco. Then along came the beginnings of World War II.
 As a sailor and boat racer, Skinner’s preference was the Navy or Coast Guard. He was commissioned a lieutenant, junior grade, in the Coast Guard Reserve and ordered to sea as executive officer aboard the cutter “Northland”. Just several months before the Pearl Harbor attack, the “Northland” landed a shore party on the coast of Greenland. Young Lt. Skinner was in command.
 It seems the Nazis had set up a weather station there. We were not at war with Germany at the time, of course, but the United States had very friendly and “cordial” relations with the Danish government in exile. (Denmark had been overrun by the Germans in 1940.) The weather station was captured and put out of operation with no shots fired or casualties.
 Thus ended what could be considered the first land action by U.S. forces in the coming war, although technically we were still at peace. America had by this time become extremely pro-British and extremely anti-German, even to the extent of our warships protecting Britain-bound convoys. In fact, we had several skirmishes with U-boats, including a most serious one when one of our destroyers was actually sunk.
 After a short stint as commander of an LST landing craft, Skinner became captain of the USS Sea Cloud. She was (and still is) an interesting ship, indeed. Officially a U.S. Navy ship, she was manned by the U.S. Coast Guard. Sea Cloud was owned by the cereal heiress Marjorie Post Hutton Davies and her husband, Joseph Davies, the ambassador to the Soviet Union and later to Belgium.
 The ship was the largest privately owned sailing yacht in the world. Built in Germany as a four-masted bark, she’s 316 feet long and displaces 3,600 tons. (She is still active to this day as a cruise ship in the Mediterranean.) Sea Cloud’s masts had been removed, only enough remaining for radio and communication purposes. Armaments were two 3-inch guns, depth charges and a slew of antiaircraft weapons. Her duties were weather and anti-submarine patrols between Greenland, Iceland and Bermuda, with home ports in Boston or Newfoundland.
 USS Sea Cloud was decommissioned out of the service in late 1944. The Navy fixed her up somewhat and returned the ship to Mrs. Davies, along with $750,000 to complete the restoration. The U.S. government had paid $1 per year to use the ship in the first place.
 After the war Sea Cloud passed through several owners, one of whom was Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. When he was assassinated in 1964 she was resold to a consortium which eventually converted her to a cruise ship.
 Long before boarding the Sea Cloud, Skinner had become aware of the terrible waste of manpower and talent in the Coast Guard and Navy. While aboard any ship at sea, African-American seamen were relegated to being stewards waiting upon white officers, or were mess mates or cooks. This was true no matter what a man’s potential and abilities were.
 Not only that, but the unfairness of it all bothered Skinner, now a lieutenant commander. Skinner wrote to many higher-ups in Washington and finally was allowed to experiment with some of his black crew. Men were at last allowed to study and to achieve ratings such as machinist’s mates, quartermasters, gunner’s mates, or whatever their bent may have been.
 Along the way this would mean a further integration between the black and white crews aboard ship. Skinner had “found the artificial distinction between race and color can disappear,” he said.
 One of the stewards aboard Sea Cloud was Jacob Lawrence. Skinner learned immediately that Lawrence was one of America’s great “social realist” painters. Born in 1917 in Harlem, he had already become famous with his narrative and thematic series of paintings telling of the black experience. Using representational imagery and brilliant colors, his works are reminiscent of the mural and wall paintings so popular in the 1930s. Lawrence is particularly noted for his monumental 41 paintings titled “The Migration Series” of 1940-41. Another series portrayed the lives of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.
 In keeping with Skinner’s plans to integrate his crew, Lawrence was put to painting the wartime activities of the Coast Guard. Those works served a valuable function in bringing the war to the American public. Many still survive today in museums and private collections.
 Lawrence painted only two portraits. One is of Carlton Skinner and is now at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Incidentally, Jacob Lawrence died this past June at age 82. His memorial service at the Riverside Church in New York City was attended by 2,500 people.
 So it was that the Navy and Coast Guard fully integrated their ships by 1945, due in major part to Carlton Skinner’s efforts. As a result of his leadership, Skinner was asked to be the first post-war governor of the island of Guam in the Pacific.
 Guam had at that time about 30,000 indigenous people, along with thousands of temporary American civilian and military personnel. Guam was a major wartime base in the Pacific during the war. Few problems arose during Skinner’s leadership of the transition from a military to a civil government between 1949 and 1953.
 After that, Skinner worked in the shipping business and for corporations in the eastern United States. Now retired, he appears still to have a lot of salt in his veins. These days he regularly enjoys the best of two worlds: he and his wife divide their time between Paris in the summers and Marblehead the rest of the year.

This is one of a series of occasional articles about Marblehead people, past and present, and their relationship with the sea.

In June 1943 Lieutenant Commander Carlton Skinner’s proposal that the U.S. Coast Guard establish an entirely integrated force eventually led to the commissioning of the first integrated ship in the armed forces, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sea Cloud. Skinner commanded a 200-man crew that included 4 African-American officers and 100 black enlisted men. Decommissioned in November 1944, this ship’s crew helped break down military segregation at sea.
After World War II, he was a public relations officer in the Department of Interior, and was selected by the Interior Department, nominated by the Navy Department and then appointed by the President to serve as Guam’s first civilian Governor. He took the oath of office on September 17, 1949. (Picture1, Picture2 taken during the 50 years celebration).

Belvedere Man Is Appointed to Tourist Commission By Brown
 Cartlon Skinner, of Belvedere, was named today by Governor Edmund G. Brown as chairman of the Tourism and Visitor Services Commision. The Commission, which was created by the 1964 Legislature, has a total of 15 members. Skinner was named as a general public representative to the Commission. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.
 “Carlton Skinner, a man of international reputation, is highly qualified for this new post.” the Governor said. “I am proud that the State of California can attract men of his talent, knowledge and ability as our new tourism and visitor services program begins to move into high gear. With an agressive and imaginative program we can help attract new tourist spending in our state and new tourist industries that can provide a major stimulus fo our state economy.”
 A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Skinner presently heads Skinner and Company, a management consultant firm in San Francisco. He was director of the Virgin Islands Corporation and was formerly employed by the United States Maritime Commision. Skinner is a former trustee of the United Seaman’s Service.
 A former governor of Guam (1949-1953), Skinner was appointed by the late President Kennedy as senior commissioner for the United States on the South Pacific Commission. This Commission is responsible for non-selfgoverning territories in the Pacific. He was formerly executive assistant to the President of the American President Lines, and was vice president of the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation. (source : Sausalito News, 23 Februray 1966)

Nauru Appoints Honorary Consul
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An airline official has been named honorary consul to the United States by one of the smallest independant nations in the world – Nauru. The government of the South Pacific island Monday named Carlton Skinner, 57, as its consul in San Francisco. Skinner is board chairman here of Air Micronesia and the title was given him as a courtesy. Nauru is 1,300 miles north-east of Australia, measures eight miles square, has a population of 7,000 and is rich in phosphates. (source : Charleston Daily Mail, Tuedsay, December 7, 1971).

Sources:
— WorId War II: The Marine Corps and the Coast Guard
— USS Sea Cloud, IX 99, Racial Integration for Naval Efficiency
— Justice on Guam Post-World War II
— The Explorers Club – Northern California Chapter (p. 3)
— Sea Cloud

— Biographical sketch of Mr. Skinner
— Carlton Skinner Appointed Governor of Guam
— Portrait of Carlton Skinner
— Guampedia - Governor Carlton Skinner
— New Coast Guard facility bears Commander Skinner’s proud name, legacy
— Is Your Ancestor on this list?
— The Long Blue Line: Cutters Sea Cloud and Hoquiam
— Flying Into The Eye of The Storm
— In memoriam Carlton Skinner (1913-2004), par Christian Coiffier
— Governor Carlton Skinner


Carlton resided in Alexandria, VA about 1935.

Carlton married Jeanne Dorothy ROWE on 4 May 1943 in Dayton, Montgomery, Ohio, and was divorced after Feb 1967 in California. Jeanne (daughter of George Lewis ROWE and Marie Henrietta FRANZ) was born on 1 Apr 1917 in Marshalltown, Marshall, Iowa; died on 19 Apr 1988 in Palo Alto, Santa Clara, California; was buried in Golden Gate Natl. Cemetery, San Bruno, San Mateo, California. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Carlton married Solange R. PETIT on 6 Apr 1970 in San Francisco, California. Solange (daughter of René Charles PETIT and Marie Danielle BARGONI) was born on 23 Oct 1928 in Meheri-Zebbeus, Tunisia; was christened in 1929 in Tunis, Tunisie; died on 29 Jul 2023 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Census: 1950, Asan, Guam
• Residence: 2012, Bolinas, Marin, California

Franz married Janie Eleda YOUNG on 15 Sep 1970 in San Francisco, California, and was divorced on 20 Jun 1970 in California. Janie (daughter of Eugene Gordon YOUNG and Patricia M. MILLER) was born on 29 Apr 1948 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; died on 7 Nov 2008 in Lancaster, Los Angeles, California. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Census: 1950, Asan, Guam

Notes:

Girl Nearly Hit By Train In Tiburon
 What might have been a tragic accident at an unauthorized crossing on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad tracks near Tiburon Reed School resulted in minor bruises Friday when a 10-year-old student at the school tripped as she crossed the tracks, apparently unaware that a freight train was bearing down on her. Andrea Skinner, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carleton Skinner of Edgewater road in the lagoon area of Belvedere, was pushing her bicycle across the forbidden crossing toward the school when she tripped and fell. She had enough presence of mind to roll away from the rails as the train bore down on her, completely demolishing her bike, reported Belvedere Police Chief Etogene Meyer. As soon as the train could be stopped, the crew rushed back to the spot but the youngster had vanished. “In this case, we were lucky,” Meyer reported. “We know that many youngsters have been walking across this unauthorized spot rather than take a longer, safer way to school.” Meyer joined with Reed School Principal Lloyd R. O”Connor in appealing for the help of parents in forbidding children to cross the railroad tracks avospt at authorized crossings. (Source: Daily Independant Journal from San Rafael, California. Tuesday, June 3, 1958)

Barbara married Remi LUCET on 6 Nov 1982 in Paris 16e, Seine, France. Remi (son of Michel LUCET and Colette DEVIDAS) was born on 26 May 1959 in Paris 14e, Seine, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: 2012, Phuket, Thailand

Notes:

Immanuel has been resident club Disk-Jockey at Bed Supperclub for the last 3 1/2 years, five nights a week. He is now (2012) Entertainment Director and Head DJ at Sri Panwa, Phuket, Thailand.

Notes:

Noah is security Manager at DreamWorks Animation (2012).

Noah married Nan SIRIRUK on 4 Feb 2011. Nan was born on 18 Apr 1983. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]