John Bertram Oakes
| John Bertram Oakes | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | April 23, 1913 Elkins Park, Pennsylvania |
| Died | April 5, 2001 (aged 87) Manhattan, New York |
| Alma mater |
Princeton University The Queen's College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Relatives | Adolph Ochs (uncle) |
John Bertram Oakes (April 23, 1913 – April 5, 2001) was an iconoclastic and influential U.S. journalist known for his early commitment to the environment, civil rights, and opposition to the Vietnam War. He was born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, the second son of George Washington Ochs Oakes and Bertie Gans. The creator of the modern op-ed page and editor of the New York Times editorial page from 1961 to 1976, his was an idealistic and progressive American voice.
His uncle was Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the New York Times. Oakes attended Princeton University (A.B., 1934), where he was valedictorian of his class and graduated magna cum laude. He then became a Rhodes Scholar (A.B., A.M., Queens College, Oxford, 1936).
On his return to the United States in 1936, he joined the Trenton Times as a reporter. A supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, he moved to Washington in 1937, where he became a political reporter for The Washington Post. In Washington, he covered the U.S. Congress, the Dies Un-American Activities Committee and F.D.R.'s 1940 campaign.
When the USA joined World War II in 1941, Oakes entered the Army as a private in the infantry. He was recruited to join the O.S.S. (the Office of Strategic Services), and served two years in Europe capturing and "turning" enemy agents still in communication with the Nazis. In recognition of his service there he received the Bronze Star, the Croix de Guerre, the Medaille de Reconnaissance and the Order of the British Empire. He ended the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Immediately after his discharge in 1946, he joined the "family paper" as editor of the Sunday New York Times "Review of the Week." Three years later, he became a member of the editorial board. While an editorial page writer, in 1951 he convinced the paper’s editors to let him write, in his spare time, a monthly column on a topic that at that time seemed arcane––the environment. He also wrote steadily for other areas of the paper, such as the book review and the Sunday magazine, for which he wrote a memorable and devastating profile of Joseph McCarthy ("This Is the Real,the Lasting Damage," March 7, 1954), in an era when to do so was to invite harassment, that became the basis of an Eleanor Roosevelt newspaper column and was subsequently widely reprinted.
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