Durstine's books are long out of print. Putting together this web site has required me to dig deep into the long forgotten warehouses of books stored far away from our everyday world. Each volume I discover, each dusty page I turn speaks to me of days long past, and of men long dead. And yet, I cannot help but believe that Durstine is somehow alive, floating in the ether, just beyond the Net.

One thing that still puzzles me though, is what happened to Durstine after he left BBDO in 1939. The books tell of differences in management style that caused Durstine to branch off, and they dutifully report that he formed his own agency: Roy S. Durstine. But the rest is very hazy indeed.

It is telling I think, that today, BBDO traces its lineage to George Batten, a man who was long dead by the time BBDO was formed in 1928. The official BBDO literature hardly makes mention of Durstine, and several phone conversations with current BBDO employees has revealed to me the fact that he has long since been forgotten.

For me, this is part of the mystique surrounding the man. A man who has had such great impact on our society, and yet remains forever in the shadows of another time.

-Jesse Morgan, October, 1997