One of a kind

Judge Carr is a fundraiser and a donor, a basketball alumnus who gives away his tickets, and an old-school guy who still does business with personal meetings and handwritten notes

BY GREG JENKINS

Before you ask, yes, it’s a nickname—one with rich family history behind it.

His father, Robert Winston Carr Sr., a renowned Durham architect, shared the nickname “Judge.” It was Robert Watson Winston, a North Carolina Superior Court judge and state legislator, who first earned the moniker before it passed on to his grandson and great-grandson.

“Judge”— family history aside — is perhaps the least likely nickname for the friendliest person you’d ever want to meet. Robert Winston Carr Jr. B.S.E.’71 is known to Duke staff, alumni, and friends as a passionate advocate for the university, a guy who will clear his schedule to give an alumni’s child a campus tour, and absolutely the go-to connection for men’s basketball tickets. He spends most nights and a lot of weekends hand-writing birthday and thank you cards—thousands every year.

Carr is more than the Senior Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations at the Pratt School of Engineering—he’s an ambassador and docent, armed with the history of the school and the knowledge of more than three decades of its inner workings. In conversations about his work, the word “relationships” comes up again and again. He believes that it’s the alpha and omega of successful fundraising.

“It’s all about relationships,” Carr says. “I understand that part of it because there’s nothing else. And the longer you’re in development at the same place, you develop more and more relationships.”

Duke and Durham to the bone

In 2026, Carr celebrated 35 years working at Duke and 55 years since his graduation. His ties to the university go back much further: growing up in Durham, he sat with his siblings and his scorebook in the stadiums, watching and tracking the performances of the great 1960s Duke football and basketball teams.

So many of his relatives are Duke alumni, it’s a little hard to keep track. Over the years, it’s something like 20, including his mother and several siblings and cousins. Given that family history, it was practically a given that Carr would attend his hometown college, where he leapt into Naval ROTC, freshman basketball and fraternity life along with his engineering studies. After a couple years of trying to do it all, even moving up to varsity basketball for a season, he realized he needed to focus on academics. So he quit ROTC and hoops, finished his degree, and got a job in construction.

Carr spent 20 happy years working on large commercial projects before deciding he was ready for a change. Pratt dean Earl Dowell asked him to join the school in 1990, and Carr entered fundraising with the same gusto with which he took on construction projects.

“People ask, what gave you the expertise to go from a contractor to a development guy?” he says. “When I was a contractor, I was always working with subcontractors and getting their price down. Negotiation. It was similar in fundraising. I’m negotiating with people trying to get their gift up from $100 to $1,000. That gave me a pretty good background.”

Going the extra mile

Carr can tell hours of stories about special moments with donors who became dear friends over the course of decades. It’s no wonder—he’s always thinking about special touches. One of the 50 or so birthday cards he sends each week might arrive, not just with a long note, but with a Pratt magnet, a decal, or a $2 bill. Carr says his goal is to include something that will surprise and delight a donor.

These little gifts are often deeply meaningful, too. His father the architect worked on numerous big projects at the university, including the Benjamin N. Duke Memorial Organ at Duke Chapel. The elder Carr designed modifications to the chapel to accommodate the massive size and weight of the instrument. Father and son worked together: The younger Judge was the construction project manager for the company that installed the platform on which the Flentrop organ sits, including concrete foundations, steel columns driven two floors down into bedrock, and holes drilled into to the chapel ceiling where cables lifted the heavy pipes and superstructure of the organ into place.

It was one of the things Carr is most proud of as a Duke engineer, so it makes perfect sense that one of Carr’s delightful surprises in his alumni correspondence is a refrigerator magnet with a photo of the gorgeous organ.

“I like that he’s old-school,” says Pamela Hanson, Pratt’s assistant dean for alumni affairs. Hanson has worked with Carr for 31 years, moving up from an administrative assistant to school leadership. “The personalization, how he approaches taking care of our alumni, appreciating them. It used to be personal phone calls, but now people don’t answer the phone, so the way you can reach people is to write them a note. It’s amazing how many alumni will reach back out and say, ‘I got your note. That meant something to me.’”

Carr knows what donors like because he and his wife, Marjorie M.T.S.’92 (better known as Muff), are donors, too. They endowed an unrestricted fund at the Divinity School, gave to the building fund for the Fitzpatrick Center at Pratt (Michael Fitzpatrick ’70 is an old friend), endowed both an athletics scholarship and an engineering scholarship, gave to the Blue Devil Tower building project, and made a large gift to the Hudson Hall renovation—a project Carr is actively raising money for now. The couple also has a significant estate gift that will benefit many of those same areas at Duke.

“He cares about the donor,” Hanson says. “He walks the walk. He’s personally committed to giving, and I think that’s something special. So when he asks people for money, he can say, ‘I’ve done this, too.’”

Carr agrees: “How can you ask people for money if you don’t do it yourself?” he asks. “Working at Duke, I saw the meaning of why we should be doing this.”

Judge and Muff have given to the Pratt Annual Fund since 1972 and became Iron Dukes members the same year. Over time, he has gained access to eight men’s basketball season tickets, all of which go to donors for every single game. Very few people know that he uses those tickets as donor stewardship at his own cost.

“Those eight tickets have been with me since I’ve been at Duke,” he says. “I have tried to use them the best I can to help raise money. I haven’t been to a game in — I can’t tell you when.”

Committed with a capital “C”

Carr is certainly proud of his family, his university, and his Durham upbringing, but he’s also proud of the place where he and Muff met and spent many summers over the years—YMCA Camp Seafarer in Arapahoe, N.C. Both worked various jobs at the camp for years before and after they were married. They have given generously to Seafarer and were both named to the camp’s Hall of Fame.

Judge explains that they would have donated more to Duke over the years, but Camp Seafarer is such an important part of their hearts and their lives, they wanted to support it in significant ways, too. That goes back to the philosophy of walking the walk with his philanthropy and his fundraising.

As he prepares to pilot a boat into the sunset in a few years, Carr feels a sense of accomplishment. True to his construction roots, he helped raise funds to build the Fitzpatrick Center and the Wilkinson Building. He hopes the capstone on his career will be a successful effort on the Hudson Hall project, renewing the building where he took classes for his engineering degree. Until then, he plans to keep on working hard for his alma mater by tending to his many relationships.

“You can’t fake it—people see right through that,” Carr says. “You actually have to believe in what we are doing for our school and university.”