Ninth Generation

5320. Guy Newton Skillman was born on 31 March 1899 in Herndon, Fairfax, VA. He died on 27 September 1970 at the age of 71 at 6203 Field Street in Seat Pleasant, MD. Skillman, Guy Newton,

of 6203 Field Street, Seat Pleasant, Maryland. On September 27, 197, father one one daughter; four brothers, one sister, and three grandchildren. Services at Chambers Funeral Home, 5801 Cleveland Avenue, Riverside, Maryland, at 12 noon, Thursdday, October 1, 1970. Interment Baltimore National Cemetery.

Skillman, Guy Newton,

Officers and Members of Veterans of Foreign War, Stewart Hartman Turner, Post No 1627 are hereby notified of the death of our late Comrade GUY N. SKILLMAN, V.F.W. National Honor Gard services will be held Wednesday, September 30th, at 8:30 p.m. at Chambers Funeral Home, 5801 Cleveland Avenue, Riverdale, Maryland, Eugene Danields, Commander. He was buried on 1 October 1970 at Plot P#2733 Baltimore National Cemetery, 5501 Frederick Avenue, in Baltimore (Independent City), Baltimore, MD. Guy had Social Security Number 577-18-2689. He served in the military World War I and World War II (Rank MM II) he was in the naval reserves..

Guy Newton Skillman and Dorothy Theresa Sheriff were married on 21 August 1926 in Baltimore (Independent City), Baltimore, MD. They were divorced. Dorothy Theresa Sheriff, daughter of Howard H. Sheriff and Margaret Scott, was born on 9 May 1904 at Election District 13 in Kent, Prince George's, MD. In 1972 she was a U.S. Government Secretary, FBI Secretary to Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover's companion. in District of Columbia. J. Edgar Hoover’s Fortune
From "What Happened to J. Edgar Hoover's Fortune?" by Robert Walters, Parade Magazine, January 16, 1977
The once-powerful director of the FBI was in office longer than most public servants can hope for. During that time, Hoover devoted himself so completely to his job that he spent very little of his salary. He died “at his desk” with a sizeable fortune. The question now is, what has become of it?

In death as in life, J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI for 52 years, remains a subject of controversy.
For more than four years—he died on May 2, 1972—a bizarre struggle has been going on over Hoover’s estate.
Almost all of the estate was willed to FBI Associate Director Clyde A. Tolson, Hoover’s longtime confidant and close companion. When they were working together at the FBI, Hoover’s bulletproof Cadillac limousine would pick up Tolson every morning at his apartment at precisely the same time. And they invariably lunched at the same restaurant in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.
Every summer, the pair would travel to the Del Mar Racetrack outside San Diego. On the first day of every year, they went to New York to celebrate Hoover’s birthday. And every winter, they fled to Miami Beach. Hoover and Tolson also made numerous trips around the country, always shepherded by FBI agents who temporarily abandoned their crime-fighting tasks to act as tour guides.
Former agent Joseph l. Schott, in a book called No Left Turns, describes the often-hilarious aspects of preparing for a Hoover and Tolson visit to a Texas hotel. Four down pillows had to be placed on each man’s bed; typed operating instructions had to be put next to all appliances, and a doctor had to be on call in case of medical emergencies.
On the night of Hoover’s death, Tolson moved into the Hoover home on 30th Place, a quiet residential street in Northwest Washington, where he went into seclusion for several days.
Following Tolson into the Hoover home was an assessor assigned to inventory the household possessions. He found a grab bag of statues, figurines, rugs, mementos, photographs, cartoons, and artifacts from every corner of the world.
Among the items that occupied almost every nook and cranny of the Hoover house were a celluloid figure of Buddha, a gold-plated Colt .22 revolver with a mother-of-pearl handle, a mounted golden railroad spike, an airplane propeller, a marble fragment of Hitler’s bookcase, a pottery dish with the Justice Department seal, and a pair of Chinese opium pipes.
Also in the home were twenty-six miniature elephants made of ivory, crystal, teak, and bronze, twenty-three Indian rugs, a dozen miniature ivory horses, eight miniature wooden horses, numerous female nude figures made of a variety of materials, and countless trinkets form Haiti, Japan, Mexico, Germany, China, Switzerland, Hungary, India, and Morocco.
Shortly after Hoover’s death, the Washington Star interviewed this neighbors and reported on his fetish about orderliness in the house:
“Hoover rarely switched a picture or art object after he had assigned it a place in his house. In fact, when everything had to come down one year so that the wallpaper could be cleaned, he had photographs of the walls taken first, to make certain that everything would be put back in the same place.”
The complete list of Hoover’s household possessions took forty-nine legal size pages, including more than 1200 items and carried an estimated value of just under $70,000. Additional assets—in the form of cash, insurance policies, stocks, and bonds—brought the total value of the Hoover estate to slightly more than $425,000.
Bachelor Hoover’s will called for small bequests totaling about $11,500 to a handful of distant relatives and personal aides. His funeral cost slightly more than $5000, and the federal estate tax took $135,000.
Everything remaining, valued at approximately $280,000, was willed to Tolson, although Hoover specified that if Tolson should die before or at the same time he did, the money should be divided equally between two charities.
One early, ominous sign of what was to befall Hoover’s estate involved a pair of cairn terriers, which were his pets when he died. A dog fancier, Hoover had at least seven dogs as pets during his time in Washington, and he thought enough of the animals to purchase gravesites and perpetual care for them at a suburban Washington pet cemetery.
His will, although relatively short, contained a clause that specifically said: “I would like Clyde Tolson to keep or arrange for a good home for my two dogs,” But according to one source familiar with the estate, the two dogs were killed shortly after Hoover’s death because “they were pretty old.”
Hoover’s will was processed in the District of Columbia courts with few complications, although there were some unexpected claims. Among those shrugged off by court officials were the following:
A Richmond, Va., man who claimed to be “a first cousin nine times removed” and offered a genealogical chart to identify others in the family.
Three Michigan men who claimed the FBI had violated their civil rights through illegal electronic surveillance, thus entitling them to compensatory payment from the estate.
A Gainesville, Ga., woman who wrote this: “I am his wife. We were married in Hall County, Georgia, in 1945. We have a son…”
The bulk of the Hoover estate was transferred to Tolson, apparently without a hitch—until Tolson died in April 14, 1975, almost three years after Hoover. Touching off the controversy was a clause in Tolson’s will that specified “I leave nothing… to my brother,” Hillory A. Tolson, or to any of his brother’s children or grandchildren.
The brother promptly filed a lawsuit charging that at the time of Hoover’s death, Tolson “suffered from many ailments that resulted in his permanent disability” and made Tolson “an easy prey for undue influence and coercion, which was exhibited upon him” by John P. Mohr, the FBI’s third highest ranking executive under Hoover’s administration.
Hillory Tolson contended that his brother was improperly influenced not only by Mohr, who received $26,000 under Clyde Tolson’s will, but also by Dorothy S. Skillman, Clyde Tolson’s secretary at the FBI and the intended recipient of a $27,000 bequest.
Before that lawsuit settled in an out-of-court agreement, it produced a series of startling admissions by present and former FBI employees, all required to testify under oath, in their depositions.
The most significant of those disclosures involved a series of events that began on May 22, 1972—less than three weeks after Hoover’s death.
Mrs. Skillman’s sworn testimony was that on that date Mohr brought her a “power of attorney” document authorizing him to handle Tolson’s financial affairs. Mohr asked Mrs. Skillman to sign the name of her boss—and she never bothered to check with Tolson to see if he approved.
“I knew Mr. Mohr was taking care of matters for Mr. Tolson,” said Mrs. Skillman, “and I didn’t question any order he gave me or any instructions he gave me from Mr. Tolson.”
Three days later, on May 25, Mrs. Skillman again signed Tolson’s name to a crucial legal document, a letter to a Washington bank containing detailed instructions for the handling of Hoover’s estate. Again, she acted only on Mohr’s instructions and never consulted Tolson.”
The next day, the process was repeated again with another “power of attorney” document. As in the first case, Tolson’s signature was supposedly witnessed by two high-ranking FBI officials, James B. Adams and Nicholas P. Callahan.
During the legal struggle over the Tolson will, Adams admitted that “Mr. Tolson did not sign it [the power of attorney] in my presence,” and Callahan said he did not believe the signature was Tolson’s, although it was “similar to signatures of his in the past.”
Although Hoover named Tolson executor of his estate, the series of legal documents signed, witnessed, and notarized by FBI employees using Tolson’s name, but without his knowledge, had the effect of transferring control of the Hoover legacy to Mohr—and it is he who now also serves as executor of the Tolson estate.
Tolson’s estate—including Hoover’s house, knickknacks, and cash—totaled more than $725,000. His will called for the distribution of almost $200,000 among more than a dozen friends and colleagues. Another $100,000 was accepted by his brother Hillory under terms of the agreement that settled the lawsuit.
The remainder of the estate is to go to the same two charities designated by Hoover: the Boys Club of America and the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Memorial Fund for Cancer Research. But neither group has yet received any money, and by the time it is delivered, the amount may be very small. “I’m not sure there will by much left after the lawyers get through,” says one man who has followed the tribulations of the Hoover-Tolson estate.
All of the bills for the legal fight with the Tolson family have not yet been submitted but will probably cost the Tolson estate close to $100,000. And soon after that court case was settled, there emerged another serious threat to the disposition of the Hoover-Tolson assets.
It is a civil suit filed in mid-1976 in federal court in Washington. A group of former officers and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group headed by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., charge that they were the subject of illegal FBI wiretapping and eavesdropping during the 1960’s.
The SCLC members who initiated the lawsuit are asking that the defendants—including Tolson—be required to pay $6 million. The lawsuit may well entangle the estate in a new, costly, and lengthy legal battle.
The story of Hoover’s legacy is one of dismemberment. Even his collection of awards, honors, and mementos now faces an uncertain future. Tolson’s will instructs his executor “to install these memorabilia and personal property … in the J. Edgar Hoover Room in the new FBI Building.”
The current FBI Director, Clarence M. Kelley, late last year discovered still another cache of Hover treasures—packed in boxes at FBI headquarters—but he’s not notably anxious to display them.
In a letter to court officials, Kelley cited eighteen separate boxes of scrolls, certificates, plaques, photos, and trays from police chiefs’ organizations, Boy Scout groups, American Legion posts, and a host of other organizations.
In addition, said Kelley, another sixty-eight “boxes, crates, and packets” of newspaper articles, photographs, certificates, diplomas, and honorary degrees have not even been inventoried by the FBI.
The FBI is retaining custody of the materials while the Justice Department considers whether their rightful owner is the federal government of the Hoover and Tolson estates. And the FBI has no current plans to establish a room for display of the memorabilia—a far cry from the days when whatever Hoover wanted, Hoover got. She died on 1 November 1991 at the age of 87 in Accokeek, Prince Georges, MD. Skillman, Dorothy S.

On Friday, November 1, 1991, Dorothy S. Skillman, beloved mother of Patricia S. Allison; grandmother of Kathleen, Linda and Stafford Allison. Services will be held Monday, November 4, at 10:30 a.m. from the George P. Kalas Funeral Home, 6160 Oxon Hill Road, Oxon Hill, Maryland. Interment Cedar Hill Cemetery, in lieu of flowers contributions may be made to Children's Hospital National Medical Center. Dorothy had Social Security Number 577-60-2218.

Guy Newton Skillman-81498 and Dorothy Theresa Sheriff-81505 had the following children: