Anthony Dryden Marshall

Known as Tony, Marshall was the only child of the American philanthropist Brooke Astor and her first husband, New Jersey state senator John Dryden Kuser.[1] Marshall was the stepson of Charles H. Marshall (his mother's second husband, whose surname he adopted at the age of 18).

By his father's second marriage, he had a half-sister, Suzanne Dryden Kuser (born November 24, 1931), who served with the U.S. Department of State, was an intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and has been a consultant to the National Security Agency. He also had two stepsiblings, Peter Marshall and Helen Huntington Marshall (born April 6, 1918), wife of the composer Ernest Schelling and later of the cellist János Scholz.

Marshall attended Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. After enlisting in 1942 during World War II, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps (his grandfather John H. Russell Jr. had served as commandant of the Marine Corps before the war) and led his platoon in the battle of Iwo Jima, attaining the rank of captain and earning a Purple Heart. After the end of the war he enrolled in Brown University.

Marshall was the U.S. consul in Istanbul, Turkey (1958–1959). During the Nixon administration he served as the U.S. ambassador to the Malagasy Republic (1969–1971). Later he served as ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago (1972–1974) and Kenya (1973) as well as to the Seychelles (1976) during the Ford administration.[2] He was also appointed special assistant to Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. to oversee the development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.

In the 1980s Marshall was an officer with United States Trust Company of New York where he assisted the bank with the management of large estate accounts.

Marshall was married three times. His first wife was Elizabeth Cynthia Cryan, whom he married on July 26, 1947, in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.[3] The groom's stepfather Charles Marshall was his best man.[4] They had twin sons:

• Alexander R. Marshall (born May 14, 1953), a photographer
• Philip Cryan Marshall (born May 14, 1953), a tenured professor and director of historic preservation at Roger Williams University until 2017 when he left the position to dedicate his efforts full-time to elder justice as the founder of Beyond Brooke.

His second wife was his former secretary Thelma Hoegnell (born May 11, 1928), whom he married on December 29, 1962.[5] The couple were divorced on January 24, 1992, reportedly following Marshall's affair with Charlene Gilbert, the wife of an Episcopal priest in Northeast Harbor, Maine.[6]

His third wife and widow, whom he married in 1992, is the former Charlene Detwiler Tyler (born July 28, 1945), the former wife of Paul E. Gilbert, a naval officer turned Episcopal priest, and a daughter of Charles Matthew Tyler, an insurance actuary and businessman of Charleston, S.C. By this marriage Marshall had two stepdaughters Arden (born 1969) and Inness (born 1972) and a stepson Robert (born 1976).

In July 2006 Philip Marshall filed suit against his father alleging mistreatment of his grandmother Brooke Astor and mismanagement of her funds. He requested that Anthony Marshall be dismissed as her guardian and replaced by family friend Annette de la Renta. That request was granted temporarily pending a court hearing on August 8, 2006. In December 2006 based on a Court Evaluator's report Anthony Marshall was found not guilty of elder abuse.

• Steve Fishman, "Mrs. Astor's Baby: The Fight for A Mother's Love, And Money", New York Magazine, November 12, 2007
• Indictment, New York v. Anthony D. Marshall and Francis Morrissey