Boy Wonder


This article recently appeared in the New York Times Magazine's annual "The Lives They Lived" issue for 2014, a retrospective of notable lives that came to a close during the year.

Richard Grayson
b. 1926
He turned personal tragedy into a lifetime of high achievement.


As a boy, Richard “Dick” Grayson was an excellent student, an accomplished track and field athlete, and an active member of several school clubs. In short, he was something of an overachiever. His overachieving stemmed from an early tragedy. In 1930 four-year-old Dick lost both parents in a boating accident in Long Island Sound. His aunt and uncle, Harriet Cooper Wayne and Andrew Wayne, gave him a home.

Aunt Harriet and Uncle Andrew had already taken in another orphaned nephew, Bruce, whose own parents had been murdered five years earlier during a mugging. Before his younger cousin’s arrival in the household, Bruce was extremely withdrawn. Harriet and Andrew attempted to draw Bruce out of his shell by giving him a share of the responsibility of caring for his much younger nephew. It worked. “Uncle Bruce became like a perfect older brother to Dad,” Dick Grayson’s oldest son, Jason says. “Dad always said that he was one of the biggest influences on his life.”

Bruce was obsessed with the idea of maintaining “a sound mind in a sound body.” He pushed himself to become a superb all-around student and athlete. Dick worked hard to follow in his surrogate brother’s footsteps. “At school they used to call him `the Boy Wonder,’” says daughter Stephanie. “I think his classmates went back and forth about whether to admire him or be jealous of him.”

Grayson’s reputation as a “boy wonder” earned him a certain notoriety in the early 1940s. Between 1940 and 1944 New York City’s leading costumed vigilante, the “mystery man” known as the Batman, was often seen in the company of a younger costumed sidekick dubbed “Robin” by the press. Eyewitnesses initially reported “Robin” as being in his early teens. In other words, he was exactly the same age as Dick Grayson.

This made some who knew Dick suspicious—because the athletic, unattached, and somewhat mysterious Bruce Wayne was widely suspected of being the Batman. “I’ve heard that it was the talk of the town in their social circles,” said Stephanie. “The suspicions were even aired in the press. Dad never spoke about it much, but he told me that he had to endure a lot of teasing and snooping. Somebody even started a cruel rumor that his parents had actually been murdered, just like Uncle Bruce’s parents were, and that that was why Dad supposedly joined him in becoming a vigilante.”

“Robin” appeared regularly with the Batman through the summer of 1944. He seems to have ceased vigilante activity in the fall of that year—the very same time Dick Grayson left home to attend Yale University. Dick excelled in his studies, graduated with honors, married college sweetheart Elizabeth “Betty” Kane, and became a rising figure in the world of civil engineering, at a time when the massive postwar boom in construction elevated that profession’s prestige to something of an all-time high. In 1951 Grayson joined New York City construction coordinator Robert Moses’ team and participated in many of Moses’ “urban renewal” redevelopments of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In the early 1960s Grayson underwent a crisis of conscience. Critics had come to accuse Moses of destroying established neighborhoods and neighborhood communities, of failing to appreciate the importance of historic landmarks and neighborhoods built on an intimate scale. Grayson came to the conclusion that the critics were substantially correct. In 1963 he resigned from his position with the city.

Soon he began a second career—as an advisor with Bruce Wayne’s recently-formed Wayne Foundation. He spent the next four decades with the Wayne Foundation, working on Wayne’s numerous philanthropic projects. Whenever his cousin wanted something built—whether it was a neighborhood center, a playground, or a model small-scale housing development—Dick Grayson served as the leader of its design team. In later years he encouraged the Wayne Foundation to become involved in plumbing and other utility projects in Third World countries, and is credited with helping to pioneer the concept of “sustainable development.”

Grayson turned his talents to more personal projects as well. When the Graysons’ autistic youngest child, Cassandra, failed to develop verbal communication skills at an early age, Dick and Betty worked with childhood development experts to design new techniques to help nonverbal autistic children learn to communicate. They discovered in the process that Cassandra had an interest in martial arts. Helping her to train and spar became one of her still-athletic father’s favorite pastimes. Cassandra eventually did develop verbal skills, attended college, and became a noted competitive martial artist.

Somehow Dick also found time to work on hobby projects at home, often with the assistance of second son Timothy. Even in this he always tried to put his time to good use. “We worked together on a lot of stuff for Uncle Bruce,” Timothy recalls. “Some early models for Uncle Bruce’s projects were tinkered together in Dad’s workshop. We sort of served as the Wayne Foundation’s R&D department! In the late ‘60s Dad also worked on some kind of interesting electronic gizmos that he didn’t let me talk to others about—spy cameras and listening devices and stuff. Some of it he wouldn’t even let me work with him on! I never did find out what it all was about. Maybe it was Dad’s unique way of relaxing, by doing something that wasn’t his usual thing.”

Throughout his life Dick Grayson never completely lived down the suspicion that he had been “Robin” in his teenage years, and had continued to be involved with the later Batman vigilantes of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. “It was a real source of annoyance to Dad,” says Stephanie. “Every time a new book or something about the Batman came out, there would be people wanting to interview him. He never once granted an interview. He tried to be nice about it, but I could tell that it bothered him.

“In the end, even those of us close to Dad can’t say for certain that he was or wasn’t Robin, the Boy Wonder. I know this much, though. Dad was a great father, and a great human being who spent his whole life trying to better other peoples’ lives. He was definitely a wonder in that sense.”

Well written article.