John Bertram Oakes (1913-2001)

His obituary in the family-owned newspaper for which he worked all his life began: He, "infused the opinion pages of The New York Times with his crisp reasoning, passionate convictions and liberal political views for more than 40 years, 15 of them as editor of the editorial page." John L. Hess wrote, "if people think of the Times today as a great newspaper and a liberal one, it’s largely an illusion, but Oakes believed in it and tried to make it true." A fierce critic of the Vietnam War and McCarthyism, he championed civil rights and protecting the environment. His views frequently saw him at odds with the paper's owner, his cousin, Arthur Ochs Sulzburger. He twice won the George Polk Award (1966 and 2001) and in 1970 he initiated the first modern "Op-Ed" on which the op-ed page of all other American newspapers is modelled. On first introducing the page, he explained that its motive was to provide a window on the ideas and opinions of non-journalists. The John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism was established in 1994 as an annual prize for print journalists, administered today by Columbia University's School of Journalism. In 1945, he married Margery Hartman (1916-2014) and they had four children. They lived between 1120 Fifth Avenue in New York City and their summer home at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.