In 1971 golfer Arnold Palmer autographed a sketch that local artist Duke Barrett drew as a teen.
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In 1971 golfer Arnold Palmer autographed a sketch that local artist Duke Barrett drew as a teen.

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Local man’s artwork impresses Presidents, other famous folks

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<p>President Jimmy Carter autographed local artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett’s sketch “With Best Wishes to my friend Mark.”</p>
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President Jimmy Carter autographed local artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett’s sketch “With Best Wishes to my friend Mark.”

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<p>President Bill Clinton autographed the sketch that Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett drew of him.</p>
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President Bill Clinton autographed the sketch that Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett drew of him.

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<p>President Richard M. Nixon added his autograph to artist Mark ‘Duke” Barrett’s collection.</p>
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President Richard M. Nixon added his autograph to artist Mark ‘Duke” Barrett’s collection.

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<p>President Ronald Reagan signed this sketch by local artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett.</p>
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President Ronald Reagan signed this sketch by local artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett.

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<p>Duke Barrett with former astronaut Buzz Aldrin.</p>
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Duke Barrett with former astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

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<p>President Barack Obama wrote ‘To Duke, Best Wishes’ when he autographed this sketch by Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett.</p>
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President Barack Obama wrote ‘To Duke, Best Wishes’ when he autographed this sketch by Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett.

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<p>Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett was able to collect not only the autograph of jazz great Duke Ellington but of members of his band as well. Duke Ellington later sent Barrett Christmas cards.</p>
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Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett was able to collect not only the autograph of jazz great Duke Ellington but of members of his band as well. Duke Ellington later sent Barrett Christmas cards.

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<p>For years artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett, of Dallas, used images of his dog, Dupont — named after the company where his father worked as a chemist — to send holiday greetings. This image is reminiscent of a famous Norman Rockwell painting.</p>

For years artist Mark ‘Duke’ Barrett, of Dallas, used images of his dog, Dupont — named after the company where his father worked as a chemist — to send holiday greetings. This image is reminiscent of a famous Norman Rockwell painting.

Back in 1971, when Mark “Duke” Barrett was in ninth grade and already a talented artist, he talked his way into the press tent at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., where the U.S. Open Championship was taking place.

“I was as cool as a breeze,” recalled Barrett, 64, who now lives in Dallas. “I’ve never been shy.”

Barrett, then a student at Springfield High School in Delaware County, had brought along a portrait of Arnold Palmer that he had sketched and he came away with what he wanted — an autograph from the famous golfer.

Over the years Barrett has sketched other famous people, including five Presidents of the United States who each signed an autograph on his artwork.

“I got Bill Clinton’s at Nanticoke High School, when he came in for (former Congressman Paul E.) Kanjorski,” Barrett said, explaining another of his autograph-collecting techniques. “While he’s doing the rope line, getting ready to leave, I hold up my picture and make a signing gesture. Then I give it to the Secret Service and they take it to him and they send it back out.”

Barrett has used other tactics, too, to collect a Presidential signature on a sketch.

For President Richard Nixon?

“I mailed it to him.”

For President Jimmy Carter?

“I got it when he visited a neighbor of my grandmother in Lansdowne.”

For President Ronald Reagan?

“I wrote to Ron Reagan at the White House, where I knew somebody who worked on computers in the West Wing.”

Before he secured President Barack Obama’s signature, in 2013 at Lackawanna College in Scranton, Barrett remembers, his Obama sketch snagged a compliment from a campaign staffer.

“I had it in a plastic bag with my name and address and asked a Secret Service guy to take it (to the President.) He said, ‘I can’t do that’ and I said, ‘but you could get the head staffer for the campaign.’ When the head staffer came over he looked at the sketch and said, ‘This is so good he’d definitely sign it.”

That prediction came true.

Besides his brushes with famous people Barrett has had other excitement in his life, including a backpacking trip he and a friend took through Peru and Bolivia during the 1980s.

“We fly into Lima; the Shining Path terrorists are blowing up buildings,” he recalled matter-of-factly. “We take a 10-hour bus ride to La Paz; we’re pulled off by an Uzi-carrying cop. It turned out he wanted a couple-peso bribes.”

Barrett safely returned to the United States, where by 1989 a friend with whom he had attended Penn State University, Chuck Cheskiewicz, invited him to help develop a golf simulator.

“He said, ‘I need you to do all the artwork,’ ” said Barrett, who had never lost his fondness for the game.

The simulator, which the pair named DeadSolid Golf, was designed to allow golfers to practice their swings indoors while experiencing the atmosphere of famous golf courses.

For the past 20 years Barrett and his wife, Sandra, have been Cheskiewicz’s neighbors in Dallas.

Barrett also worked with The Creative Coalition, an advocacy organization for the arts and entertainment industry, during the early days of digital photography. “I would photograph all their events,” he said, adding that gave him a chance to meet such luminaries as broadcaster Walter Cronkite, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and activist Gloria Steinem.

During his conversations with famous folks, he developed a knack for not asking the obvious questions.

“Buzz Aldrin seemed to be tired of everybody asking him what it felt like to be in space,” Barrett said. “But we talked about the future of the space program, and he seemed to like that.”

Decades earlier, Barrett seemed to have struck a chord with jazz legend Duke Ellington by asking him to play not one of his most famous hits but a less well known number called “B.P. Blues.”

That encounter took place a year after Barrett had taken the Arnold Palmer sketch to the golf course. Still in high school, he attended an Ellington performance and “stood right next to his piano the entire night at a place in Kennett Square,” Barrett recalled.

“At intermission I asked a song request, not a big famous one. Ellington called out to his band, ‘Hear that? Young man wants to hear ‘B.P. Blues’.”

Perhaps Ellington was tickled that Barrett appreciated that particular number. Or perhaps he was impressed by Barrett’s artwork. In any case, Barrett said, “He wrote my name and address down and every Christmas I would get a Christmas card. (The first time a card from Ellington arrived) my mom picked me up from school and said, ‘You got something in the mail.’ His address was on it, Riverside Drive, New York, New York.”