Holden Caulfield, 74, patron of the ducks in Central Park, died September 9, after a ten-year battle with emphysema. He was a resident of the Bellington Hotel in Manhattan, though for nearly twenty years, he had lived in a shack and subsequently in a tent near the lagoon in Central Park. His brief moment of fame was triggered in 1967 because of a TV appearance by his older brother.
During the 1940s and 50s, Mr. Caulfield attended several prep-schools, including Pencey, Wootton, Elkton Hills, and Pendleton Military Academy, without graduating from any of them. He was admitted to Bennington on the basis of the essay he submitted on saving the wildfowl in Central Park, but he transferred shortly to Antioch and then to Kenyon, though he did not complete his B.A. Although reclusive and shy, Mr. Caulfield was jolted from obscurity suddenly during the 1967 Academy Awards ceremony when his older brother, D.B., won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for "The Secret Goldfish," based on his earlier short story of the same title. During his acceptance speech, D.B. Caulfield announced to the millions of international viewers that he owed the entire concept for the story and the subsequent screenplay to his brother, Holden, "Who might now at this very moment be freezing his ass off in Central Park, defending the rights of our winged brothers." Reporters pursued the cryptic statement by searching the Park, only to discover that Holden Caulfield had built a shed near the lagoon, hidden by shrubs, where he had already been living for several years in order to study the migration habits of the city's most famous feathered creatures.
"I preferred the silence and the privacy that I have enjoyed here to this phony celebrity role. I really did," Mr. Caulfield told a crew of surprised reporters from Channel 5. Though city authorities evicted him from the park and destroyed his hovel, Mr. Caulfield persisted by pitching a tent each night and then dismantling it...