Marriage(s) and Relationships: Married to: Mary Evelyn Prince OCT 1949, Honolulu, HAWAII, Ended by: Divorce
Child: Married to: Angelica Philippa Kaufman 1 OCT 1952, Palm Beach, FL, USA, Ended by: Divorce
Child:Prince Ilinsky Dmitri Romanovsky Child:Princess Ilinsky Paula Marie Romanovsky Child:Princess Ilinsky Anne Romanovsky Child:Prince Ilinsky Michael RomanovskyNotes: Source: Leo van de Pas.
PALM BEACH Newspaper -- Former Mayor Paul Romanov Ilyinsky often joked
that he was "the only Romanov ever democratically elected to office." And
he was elected again and again and again. Ten times in all -- seven years
as mayor and 11 as councilman.
Mr. Ilyinsky, who traced his heritage to Russian royalty and his legacy
to the American ballot box, died in his sleep early Tuesday at his home.
Angelica, his wife of 51 years, found him at 7 a.m. He was 77.
Mayor Lesly Smith somberly announced his passing at the start of
Tuesday's town council meeting. Flags flew at half-staff in town. Funeral
arrangements have not been set. In recent years, Mr. Ilyinsky suffered
from emphysema and heart problems, part of the reason he resigned as
mayor in 1999. He stayed home to tinker with the 300-plus cars in his
O-gauge electric train set, which wound through several rooms in his
mythical, miniaturized country of Glokinspiel. Tall, lean and
well-spoken, he was the real-life incarnation of a Hollywood version of
the mayor of Palm Beach. "He was the quintessential ambassador for Palm
Beach," said Smith, a friend of 35 years. "He earned the perpetual
respect of everyone he met." Often glib, sometimes eloquent, Mr. Ilyinsky
was the unlikely combination of down-to-earth aristocrat, as comfortable
at a charity ball as at the annual town public works picnic, which he
attended even after he left office.
He was the grandnephew of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, who was
assassinated along with most of his family in 1918 during the Russian
Revolution. Fortunately for Mr. Ilyinsky, his father, Grand Duke Dimitri,
had been banished earlier by Nicholas for helping to plot the
assassination of Rasputin, the monk who had wormed his way to a position
of influence with the royal family. Mr. Ilyinsky, his family and many
Romanov descendants visited Russia in 1998 for the burial of Nicholas,
Alexandra and three of their children -- 80 years after they were
murdered. "Paul never used his royalty to his advantage," said Louis
Pryor, former chairman of the Palm Beach Civic Association. "I'm not
saying he wasn't proud of it, but he was prouder of being an American and
being a Marine."
Battled fellow blue blood. His royal lineage certainly came into play
when he first ran for mayor in 1987 against longtime friend Yvelyne
"Deedy" Marix, who had encouraged him to run for the council six years
earlier. The race was dubbed an election of blue bloods: Mr. Ilyinsky, of
Russian royalty, vs. Marix, a descendant of Charlemagne, the
ninth-century ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. People magazine and The New
York Times wrote stories on the race. "The next mayor is going to have to
put on low-heeled shoes and comfortable clothes and get the hell off this
island once in a while," Mr. Ilyinsky said during the campaign. Marix,
who seldom wore high heels, won. The next year, Mr. Ilyinsky was
reelected to the council. Later he would joke, "If I could prove I was
related to God, I would have won." The pair eventually rebuilt their
friendship. He spoke at the funeral of Marix's husband, Nigel. He also
gave fencing lessons to Marix's young nephews and nieces. "He was his own
man and he was absolutely a man of integrity," Marix said. He signed her
petition when she unsuccessfully ran for mayor this month.
During his exile, Grand Duke Dimitri adopted a last name associated with
his family's former holdings in Russia. While in Europe, he met Mr.
Ilyinsky's mother, Audrey Emery, the daughter of a Cincinnati
industrialist. The family moved to Palm Beach in 1934 and the couple
divorced three years later. Mr. Ilyinsky joined the Marines when he
graduated high school in 1946. Later he rejoined the reserves while he
was attending the University of Virginia. Eventually, he became a
colonel. "I love it. I loved the comradeship," he said in a 1996
interview.
He met his wife across the bar at The Colony hotel, and they settled in
Cincinnati. But in 1979, after five children, they came south to Palm
Beach.
He ran a photography business and ran for town council in 1981. "He was a
man of infinite dignity, combined with great warmth. He could project
himself into any group and find friends," said Herbert Swope Jr., a
longtime town resident. Mr. Ilyinsky did enjoy the trappings of office.
His annual State of the Town address to the Palm Beach Civic Association
became enormously popular because of his glib, off-the-cuff remarks. "He
was one of the greatest raconteurs you've ever heard," Smith said. "He
could hold an audience spellbound for hours with his stories."
A prince of a mayor: By Scott Eyman, Palm Beach Post Books Editor,
Originally printed in 1996.
Paul Ilyinsky is the progeny of a fascinating, unlikely union involving
the second most-famous group of crowned heads in Europe and rich
Midwesterners, but right now he is not a man whose middle name is
Romanov, not a successful businessman - he's just a man enthused about
his favorite toy. There are more than 300 cars stretching through several
rooms, gorgeous O-gauge layouts using everything from lead locomotives
left to him by his father, Grand Duke Dimitri of Russia, to items bought
in the last several years. One design replicates mittel-Europa, and has a
distinctly Munich flavor; the other features the skyscrapers of the
American Midwest. Both are splendid, with bridges and flyovers and
carefully scaled stations and people and one custom-designed control
board that makes it all move. And now it is time. Paul Ilyinsky fires up
the control panel and starts moving the trains through the mountains of
the mythical country he calls Glokinspiel.
Amid this glorious toy for an overgrown boy, the duties of being mayor
seem very far away, which is not necessarily a bad place for them to be.
Today's civic crisis involves an irate letter from a resident about dog
poop on her lawn, a pleasantly vacuous problem that pales besides such
Palm Beach tussles of years past as topless joggers and noisy tennis-ball
machines. Is this any way for a Romanov son to spend his declining years?
There are legends about Dimitri Ilyinsky that exist mainly because he
failed to dispel them. He was just too busy, or perhaps he liked being an
ambiguous figure of mystery. Dead for more than 50 years, Dimitri remains
a luminous presence. ``He was extraordinarily handsome'' says his son.
``Extraordinarily. Charming, highly educated. He spoke numerous
languages, and possessed great humility. But, if he thought someone was
being rude, he would remind people they were speaking to a Russian grand
duke.''
From the beginning, things happened around Dimitri.
His mother, Grand Duchess Alexandra of Greece, died giving him life. His
father, Grand Duke Paul, was the youngest son of Tsar Alexander II.
As a young man, Dimitri was involved with Prince Felix Youssopov in the
plot to murder Rasputin, the grimy holy man who, the Tsarina Alexandra
believed, could cure her beloved son Alexei of his hemophilia. ``Of the
three conspirators, Dimitri was the youngest and least aggressive,'' says
Robert Massie, author of the definitive Nicholas and Alexandra. ``They
believed Rasputin to be a cancer on the imperial family and nominated
themselves to excise it. Youssopov was a strange man - he was gay, and he
married the tsar's niece. Neither he nor Dimitri ever really went to war.
They were golden youths.'' Murdering Rasputin caused Tsar Nicholas to
banish Dimitri from Russia. This was wrenching for both the Tsar and
Dimitri, for Nicholas and Alexandra had been surrogate parents to the
young nobleman. ``Dimitri was more than a first cousin,'' says Massie,
``he was almost a son, and Alexandra had tried to be a mother/sister to
him. To have Rasputin murdered by Dimitri, well . . . she was terribly,
terribly upset.'' As things turned out, killing Rasputin saved Dimitri's
life. He was packed off to the Caucasus to serve on the staff of the
Russian army, just as the Russian Revolution broke out. Since the
revolution obliterated about half of the Russian grand dukes, including
his father, he was in the right place at the right time. Somehow, Dimitri
finagled his way back to Russia just as the revolution was under way. How
he got back out when all involved with the Romanovs were forfeiting their
fortunes and lives is not known. Although Dimitri kept a diary every day
of his life, it remains resolutely silent on the matter. ``One version is
that he worked his way back to Odessa and was evacuated by a British
warship,'' says his son. ``Another theory is that, as the revolution
spread across Russia, he got back to his father's house in St.
Petersburg. The town was peaceful; the tsar was a prisoner; the
revolution had headed south. He picked up what he could - perhaps there
was a safe in the house. He caught a train, perhaps to Warsaw, then to
Paris, then London.'' What is certain is that, upon arriving in London,
he immediately went to see his cousin, King George V, who promptly gave
him a captain's commission in the British army. He was safe, if not
exactly secure. That would come later.
Audrey Emery was the youngest daughter of Midwestern industrialists. She
was a female black sheep, a beautiful free spirit who adored dogs, real
estate and the mad whirl that was life in the '20s for those who could
afford it. She was very much a character out of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a
woman understandably on the run from Cincinnati, but fully enjoying the
largess provided by the family's money, earned in a variety of things -
from candles and plastics to distilleries and real estate. As with most
of the White Russians floating around London and Paris, Dimitri Romanov
was essentially penniless. ``None of them had any money,'' says Robert
Massie. ``Nicholas' mother, Empress Marie, got away with a chest of
jewels, but Russian royalty didn't have bank accounts. All their assets
were in property and jewels, and those stayed in Russia.'' Dimitri
survived like all of the White Russians survived. As Massie bluntly says,
``They married rich women. And the women became Princess Romanov and went
to parties.'' A title as eminent as Grand Duke could be very comforting
to a family who had made their money in the provincial Midwest. The
marriage took place in 1924, and Audrey Emery became Audrey Ilyinsky,
Princess of Russia. Paul, their only child, was born four years later. If
it began as an arranged marriage with something to offer both sides, it
became something more. Dimitri was, believes his son, predominantly a
good husband, although there was that affair with Coco Chanel. ``He was
always faithful to me,'' says Ilyinsky gracefully. As was common for
children of the rich, Paul was raised by his nanny, supervised by his
parents. Compared to the way the middle class raises its children, it was
an arms-length childhood. For instance: Paul's nanny would take the boy
to Roman ruins or through the Louvre. They would meet the parents for
lunch, and Dimitri and Audrey would ask the boy what he thought of this
painting, that sculpture. Although Dimitri didn't talk about Nicholas and
Alexandra to his young son, he made a point of giving the boy picture
books about Queen Victoria and her extended family - the Romanovs were
cousins of the Windsors - and he ritualistically took Paul to any movie
that involved Russia. Dimitri could be rigid and forbidding. When Felix
Youssopov wrote a book about killing Rasputin, his father never spoke to
his old friend again. Youssopov had violated Dimitri's sense of
permissible behavior for a Russian aristocrat. And, when Dimitri played
with his electric trains, he would let his son watch, but never, ever let
him take the controls.
``Living with him was like living with an emperor,'' remembers Paul. ``He
signed his checks `Dimitri.' Just `Dimitri,' or, sometimes, `Dimitri of
Russia.' '' Dimitri had a large library, loved Chekhov, Jack London and
especially Kipling - one of his earliest admonitions to his son was to be
careful not to lose his head while all about him were losing theirs, a
significant epigram for any survivor of a bloody revolution. From his
father, Paul Ilyinsky got more than his name. There were his father's
enormous O-gauge model railroads, custom-made by artisans who came to
work at the chateau in Beau nes Nille in shirts and ties. And Dimitri
would give Paul ``lots and lots and lots of toy soldiers'' to play with,
thereby sowing the seed that would impel Paul to become a Marine. One
magical Christmas morning, Paul awoke to find the entire floor around the
Christmas tree and all the furniture in the room covered with toy
soldiers. Traveling through the capitals of Europe, Paul met the most
interesting people. Hermann Goering - ``a very charming guy'' - was
slimmer than he would be by the time World War II began. In those days,
he favored a white uniform and a Mercedes with a chauffeur. He adored
model railroads, too, and openly admired Dimitri's layout. When the war
broke out and Dimitri left France for Switzerland, a couple of Luftwaffe
trucks pulled up. Dimitri's O-gauge passion disappeared somewhere into
the Third Reich for what the family believed was Goering's personal
edification.
Paul and his parents first came to Palm Beach in 1934. After the rigors
of European chateaus and museums, Palm Beach was a fragrant place for a
little boy from a rich family to relax. He was driven to school in an
Afromobile, rickshaw-like bicycles propelled by black people. Just on the
other side of what is now I-95 was an airboat ride into the Everglades.
The Ilyinskys lived in the house now owned by Celia Lipton Farris. The
Huntingtons were next door, the Woolcott Blairs were next to the
Huntingtons, and down the street were the Wanamakers - the Philadelphia
Wanamakers. The Ilyinsky/Emery marriage broke up in 1937. Dimitri never
remarried, living at the George V hotel in Paris, enjoying the good life
- we can presume that he received a settlement sufficient to his needs -
until tuberculosis killed him in 1942.Paul's mother remarried, to Dimitri
Djordjadze, and that was something of a love match. It was, in any case,
time for Paul to figure out what he wished to do with his own life.
He graduated from high school in 1946, and immediately went into the
Marines. Getting mustered out in 1950 as a gunnery sergeant, just about
the time Korea broke out, Ilyinsky re-upped in the reserve while
attending the University of Virginia and emerged years later as a
colonel. Over the years, he served in Hawaii, Midway, Guam, Kobe,
Tsing-Tao and on an aircraft carrier with the fragrant name Shangri-La.
``I loved it,'' he says unequivocally. ``I loved the comradeship.'' One
day during the Korean War, Ilyinsky caught the eye of a young woman named
Angelica Kauffman across the bar at the Colony Hotel. She had grown up in
the south of France and her first words to Ilyinsky were, ``I don't like
Marines very much.'' After 43 years of marriage, she has presumably
softened her stance. After their five children had all arrived, Ilyinsky
made the decision to leave Palm Beach.
``It's not the easiest place to raise impressionistic children. I feel
ill at ease when someone is driven to school in a Rolls. But Cincinnati
was like this,'' he says, using two fingers to draw a square in the air.
``It was wonderfully old-fashioned that way. My mother's family had been
there for years, and it seemed like a sensible thing to do.'' It was 1979
when the inevitable day came. Ilyinsky looked out the window, saw several
feet of brown slush, and the squareness of Cincinnati suddenly seemed a
sentence, not a benefit. ``Angie,'' he said, ``would you like to go
home?''
After running a photography business, Ilyinsky was elected to the Palm
Beach town council in 1981. Two years later he ran unopposed and spent
another term as council president before running for mayor in 1987. He
lost, but got elected to the council again in 1988, then won the mayor's
job in 1993. It is something he obviously enjoys hugely - there is the
cachet of the title, of course, but there is also the activity, the
feeling of doing things that need doing. ``I could tell you I spend 30
hours a week at it, but that would be stupid,'' says Ilyinsky, estimating
his actual time at the unpaid job as 10 hours or so a week. ``He's a very
bright, warm, funny man, and an enormously popular mayor,'' says Herbert
Swope Jr., a longtime resident of Palm Beach. ``He has style and
self-assurance and lends a certain aura of dependability as well as
levity to the world. And he has a certain distinction as mayor that this
town should have.''
``Paul is the only Romanov who's achieved anything in a public way,''
says Robert Massie. ``He's atypical of the Romanovs. I think it's because
he's really an American. Paul went to American prep schools, an American
college, and the Marines. He's very proud of all that, and he should be.''
As Ilyinsky practices it, the job of mayor is part mediator, part
ombudsman.
Someone is angry - who is letting that damn dog dump on my lawn? They
want something done, and quickly. The people who can fix the situation
say they can't do it just the way the angry resident wants it done -
beheading would be suitable - so Ilyinsky tries to find a middle path
acceptable to all. In his home on the island, he still has about a dozen
of those toy soldiers his father gave him that glorious Christmas morning
so many years ago. Surrounding them are glass-fronted, carefully
constructed dioramas using hundreds of other toy soldiers - scenes of
Gordon's battles in Egypt, dramatizations of the battles of Roark's Drift
or Aqaba, fierce miniature scenes of hand-to-hand combat with a few
pinpricks of red paint to represent blood. More than anything, this
quietly interesting man with the resonant voice of a radio announcer
seems concerned that he not be apprehended as a dim, overbred Palm Beach
aristocrat. ``I drive an Oldsmobile,'' he notes proudly, ``and Steve
Forbes is one of the scariest people I've ever seen in my life.'' He may
be safely pegged as a democrat, if not a Democrat. So he plays with his
screeching cockatoo, Baby, and fondles his dachshund puppy, Twiglet -
he's had dachshunds all his life - and watches his electric trains glide
smoothly through Glokinspiel, a man with one foot in a comfortable,
traditional present, another in a distant, delicously romantic past. Is
this any way for a Romanov son to spend his declining years? Yes.
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