Frankie Solinsky Dyurea pulls out a Tunisian Blend Camel cigarette from his backpack, a habit he picked up during his summer trip to Morocco as a Princeton junior studying Arabic. Alone in Morocco and excited by the prospect of cheap cigarettes, Frankie says he wanted to act on impulse.

“For a good amount of my life I did feel controlled,” Frankie says. “Trying to find independence now when I feel like I had it restricted as a kid,” he adds.

With the cigarette still in hand, he pulls out his student ID, tracing it with his fingers. Occupying the entire width of the laminated card is his name: “Robert Frank Solinsky Dyurea.”

“I’ve been correcting people when they say ‘Frankie Dyurea,’” he explains. “I wanted to claim my full name.”

Despite his quest for independence from his parents, Frankie is proud of the four names that bind his identity. The outer corners of his name—Robert Dyurea—hold the memory of a Catholic priest who broke celibacy in secret to marry and father a child, Paul Dyurea, Frankie’s father; the inside—Frank Solinsky—holds the memory of a man, once destitute, who worked to send his daughter, Susan Fischer Solinsky, Frankie’s mother, to Princeton.

Frankie stands at a crossroads. On one hand, he values his independence; on the other, tinges of his hometown in Burlingame, California, follow him to Princeton, 2,900 miles away.

Paul’s earliest memory of Frankie’s thirst for independence comes when Frankie was just seven, on a ferry ride during a family vacation to Italy. Paul and Susan, seeing Frankie sitting on the deck by himself, decided to join him. “We probably grabbed him and pulled him over,” Paul recalls. “He got up and sat on the other side.”

Frankie doesn’t remember the ferry ride or much of Italy, but his parents have told him the story enough times for it to stick.

What he does remember, however, is the freedom that his parents gave him to pave his academic path at every juncture. His earliest decision came at five years old when his parents managed to get him redistricted to a Spanish immersion public school. Frankie was given the final say on whether he would enroll.

Decisions continued. Paul recalls a fourth grade Frankie after an admissions interview at the Synapse School. “I know you told me not to set my expectations—but I’ve set my expectations and I want to go here,” Paul recalls Frankie insisting. Frankie was admitted, and completed middle school there.

But when it came to college, Frankie says he wasn’t excited when he was accepted to his mother’s alma mater; in fact, he hadn’t even wanted to apply to Princeton—it was Susan who made him.

“I was controlled into applying,” Frankie says.

“Antebellum”—that’s the word Frankie chose to describe Princeton when he first toured it with his mother. “I didn’t want to follow in her shadow and I thought that that was what it was when I got in,” he says.

“I got in here,” he says referring to Princeton, “and Columbia and I think if I hadn’t gotten into Columbia I wouldn’t have gone here.”

“It affirmed that I was personally capable of doing this; that I,” he searches for the right word, “deserved to be here beyond the fact that my mom had gone here.”

It took Frankie three weeks to choose between Princeton and Columbia. Still, Frankie involved his family in his decision. “I ran the decision by a lot of people in my family, because I have a hard time making decisions,” Frankie admits. “It was tough and it felt like an important one.”

Now, in the place that Frankie disdainfully refers to as the “bubble,” he sits holding the names of his two grandfathers inked onto his Princeton ID: “Robert Frank Solinsky Dyurea.”

Rev. Robert F. Dyurea was a Catholic priest. He married Luilan Dyurea, a nurse at the hospital where he worked and, two years later, fathered Paul—both in secret. Marriage violated the church’s celibacy law and Rev. Dyurea risked excommunication. In 1971, despite overwhelming opposition from his congregation Rev. Dyurea was excommunicated, according to the New York Times. Paul was only five.

The scandal caused a rift. “The Duryea side, I’ve been estranged from,” Frankie explains.

The Solinsky name carries another story—Frankie is the sixth “Frank” in his maternal family to bear the name. “The Solinsky name comes from Count Solinsky,” Frankie explains. “They called him the Count, but no one knows if he was a real count with royal blood or if Americans were just racist,” he laughs.

“My grandpa grew up shit poor in California,” he adds. Despite that, Frank worked to send his daughter, Susan, to Princeton. Susan is now working on her third start-up, according to Paul.

“She goes to all these conferences and acts as a mentor to a lot of women founders,” Frankie explains. “I very much respect her and I think she’s incredible.”

Frankie gets his height, all 6’1’’, from the Solinsky’s and the Duyrea’s. He still holds the Lick-Wilmerding High School high jump record and was Captain of his Varsity Jumps Team, according to his profile on NCSA College Recruiting.

But for a long time, Frankie went by “Frankie Dyurea.” The byline on his Nassau Weekly publications—of which Frankie has been a contributor since freshman year of college—still read, “Frankie Dyurea.”

His choice to reclaim “Solinsky” coincided with his maternal grandmother’s passing. “I was boarding the plane to Argentina when they called me to say that she had her second stroke—and there was nothing I could do,” Frankie recalls.

“It changed me.”

“I feel a lot of pride for the Solinsky part,” Frankie says. For Frankie, the memory of his grandfather growing up with nothing to eat is close enough. “I don’t want to fall back,” he adds. “I take a lot of pride in the fact that my grandpa figured his stuff out, and was able to put his daughter through college.”

“My mom succeeded,” he adds.

Susan would graduate Princeton in 1986, writing her thesis on Spain, under the Department of Romance Languages and Literature, according to the Princeton Mudd Manuscript Library. Now, a comparative literature major and Latin American studies minor, these are interests that resonate with Frankie 38 years later.

“I get my mom’s interests,” Frankie says. “As much as I try to resist it, I’m a lot of her.”

“I still resist it,” he admits, “but a lot less now.”


Sources:
1. https://nassauweekly.com/byline/frankie-duryea/
2. https://www.ncsasports.org/mens-track-recruiting/california/san-francisco/lick-wilmerding-high-school/frankie-solinksy-duryea
3. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/16/archives/parishioners-rally-behind-priest-who-married-excommunicated-cleric.html
4. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/robert-francis-duryea-2941273.php
5. https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01t435gd59v?mode=simple
6. Frankie Solinsky Dyurea
7. Paul Dyurea
8. Harry Gorman