Nightclub owner, ex-bootlegger, ruled with a velvet fist. The Stork Club was the epitome of glamor. The green canopy, blue-uniformed doorman with his whistle at the ready, the heavy bronze door swinging to admit only the chosen few while crowds of craning gawkers and autograph hunters tried to get a glimpse, of what today we would call the rich and famous, are all gone. The sanctum sanctorum of the Cub Room, the “snub room” was guarded by a captain know to everyone as “Saint Peter.” Hemingway; Chaplin; J. Edgar Hoover; Frank Costello; Dorothy Kilgallen; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, once given the cold shoulder there by Walter Winchell, the Stork’s scribe in residence; the Kennedys; the Roosevelts, the Harrimans, the Nordstrom Sisters; Brenda Frazier; Erik Rhodes; Marilyn Monroe; this was a glittering world, perhaps the most enchanting nightclub ever. From the time of the speakeasy to the 1960’s he held court, trying desperately to please while often riding roughshod over all that he could intimidate. Surrounded by Jazz Age gangsters, he continually fought running battles against racketeers. He offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the return of his son-in-law in, Alexander I Rorke, Jr., in 1963, when his plane disappeared over the Caribbean. This is still shrouded in the mystery of Castro, the CIA and the Kennedy assassination. (bio by: D C McJonathan-Swarm)  Family links:  Spouse:  Hazel D Billingsley (1902 – 1991)  Children:  Jacqueline Billingsley Rorke (1926 – 1998)* *Calculated relationship