The Kingdom and the Power (17 page)

That such a formidable institution as
The Times
should be so lacking in arrogance, so weighed down by its sense of responsibility and a fear of going one step too far, may explain in part its survival and strength and it may also hint at a part of its vulnerability—not only the vulnerability of the Jewish family that owns it but also the vulnerability of the nation upon which the family has hitched its star. The anti-Semitic slights and subtleties beneath the surface of America have, in one way or other, touched nearly every member of the family, extending even into the third generation—Sulzberger’s son, a Marine on his way to Korea, was turned away from a restricted resort in Hobe Sound, Florida; a Sulzberger daughter in a girls’ private school in New York was assumed to be a friend of the only other Jewish girl in the class (the two girls came to dislike one another rather quickly); George Ochs-Oakes’s son, John Oakes, a brilliant student, was accepted within a Jewish quota at the Lawrenceville School. Given these and similar incidents, the fact that even the family that owns
The New York Times
can be subjected to such social scrutiny, it is no wonder that there would be within the institution a sensitivity to Semitism and a fastidiousness about keeping
The Times
above reproach, untouched by the prejudice within the nation.

The prejudice first became apparent to certain members of the Ochs family when they began to move northward shortly after Adolph had purchased
The New York Times
in 1896. In Chattanooga they had sensed no anti-Semitism, a circumstance that may have been the result of the very mobile, loosely structured society that had settled there after the Civil War, turning Chattanooga into a kind of frontier town, and it was also possible, George Ochs-Oakes believed, that his type of Jew was more acceptable to Gentiles than the Eastern European Jews who would immigrate to America in great numbers at the turn of the century. George interpreted his own acceptance in Chattanooga, and that of his family, as
evidence to support his theory. His father was for years the lay rabbi of the Jewish community in Chattanooga, and George had sung in the choir, and he would later marry a Jewish woman and bring up his sons in the faith: he saw himself as a “good” Jew insofar as religion was concerned, but otherwise he avoided any ethnic or nationalistic commitment to Jews, and when he was elected mayor of Chattanooga in 1893 he was convinced that he had conducted his life wisely and well.

But when he moved to Philadelphia in 1901, accepting his brother’s offer to run a newly acquired Ochs newspaper in that city, George gradually became aware of the fuller meaning of being Jewish. The more tightly entrenched society of Philadelphia was not in the least bit subtle in its discrimination, and George was surprised and appalled, although, uncharacteristically, he did not make an issue of it. He believed that to do so would only further aggravate an unpleasant situation, and he held the Jews partly accountable for the prejudice. If Jews would curtail their desire for their own schools and universities in America, would not seek political power through a Jewish vote, would stop thinking of themselves as primarily Jewish, he felt sure that the wall between Jews and other Americans would be lowered. He conceded that full integration into the American social system might take several years or even decades; the first generation of Jews born in America, and perhaps also the second, might not fully achieve a 100 percent American status. But if they remained patient and set a fine example as outstanding and loyal citizens, then the third and fourth generations would undoubtedly gain acceptance—different from their compatriots in church affiliation, but otherwise typically and totally American. This, at any rate, is what he hoped would happen, and he attempted to live the latter part of his life in such a way that would further this cause and benefit the future of his two sons.

Both sons were born and reared in the Philadelphia area, as had been his wife, the daughter of a merchant and banker whose family had been residents of Philadelphia for nearly three-quarters of a century. George’s first son, George, Jr., was born in 1909. He would attend Princeton and Oxford, becoming a skilled collegiate debater; he would work on various journals and write travel books, would serve as an artillery officer during World War II, and later he would spend about five years working for the CIA. In 1965, at the age of fifty-five, he would be killed in an automobile accident in Vermont.

The second son, John, was born in 1913. Approximately one week later, due to complications during the birth, the mother died, and thereafter George’s sons were brought up with the help of his unmarried sister, Nannie. Nannie Ochs was the oldest of the three daughters of Julius and Bertha Ochs, a year older than George, two years younger than Adolph. She had attended a girls’ college in Bristol, Virginia, but had been called home to help run the household when her mother became ill. Nannie had been courted but had never married, nor had she been encouraged to marry, especially by Adolph, who had a critical eye for suitors. Nannie was needed at home, and that is where she remained until her mother’s death. Her mother died in 1909, at seventy-five, while in New York visiting Adolph.

Nannie was then forty-eight, and she went to Europe to live and travel for the next five years, returning to reside with her brother George in Philadelphia upon the death of his wife. The boys adored Nannie, and as they got older they came to appreciate her keen mind and her strong social conscience which, in the early Thirties, transformed her into an ardent supporter of the New Deal, one who stood up to all the opposition she received at the large family gatherings of the Ochs dynasty, particularly from Arthur Hays Sulzberger and his wife, Iphigene, both of whom could barely tolerate Roosevelt—and Iphigene could absolutely
not
tolerate Eleanor Roosevelt, could not
stand
the sound of her voice. But Nannie was invariably persuasive in her views, and many years later John Oakes would trace part of his own political origin as a Liberal Democrat to his Aunt Nannie, his formal personality warming up with the mere mention of her name; although the overwhelming influence on his life was his father, George.

Long after most sons have abandoned the final illusion about their fathers, John Oakes remains firmly convinced that his father was a brilliant man of rare integrity, one who certainly possessed a superior mind to, if not the gall of, the celebrated Adolph. John has always admired his father’s forthrightness in doing and saying what he thought, regardless of how unpopular or awkward the result, and John likes to retell stories that project his father in the role of an independent thinker, bold, uncompromising. He tells of how a large delegation of Philadelphia advertisers once visited his father’s office at the
Philadelphia Public Ledger
to protest the editorial support that George Ochs had been giving to a Republican reform candidate opposed to the Democratic machine, and they
hinted that the continuance of this policy might be costly to the newspaper’s advertising revenue; but George responded with even more support for the reform candidate in the mayoralty race, and this candidate eventually won and, by way of gratitude, asked George if he had any individual whom he wished to recommend for a political job in the new administration, but George declined the offer. He had no favors to ask, no suggestions to make, George told the mayor, wishing only that the city be run with efficiency and honesty. During the mayor’s entire term George never entered the mayor’s office and he made every effort never to talk to the mayor again.

John Oakes’s interest in the protection of trees, rivers, and mountains against the ambitions of land developers was also partially inspired by his father, a devotee of national parks and an enthusiastic hiker, although John Oakes is a much more passionate conservationist than his father ever was—Oakes, in fact, is capable of more emotion and intensity over trees than perhaps any
The New York Times
man since Joyce Kilmer, the poet, who at the time of his death, in 1918, while serving in the United States Army, was on military leave from
The Times
’ Sunday department. Since Oakes became influential on
The Times
, the changing seasons have been regularly rhapsodized on the editorial page, and one of the major themes on that page has been the endless battle of nature against human greed. Such issues often bring Oakes into disagreement with men of influence, wealth, and self-righteousness, qualities not entirely lacking in John Oakes himself, and it is precisely this delicate balance between Oakes and the world that he weighs, the reflection of himself that he sometimes sees in the people that he criticizes, that has no doubt contributed to his hypersensitivity and soul-searching manner. He seems to be constantly in a state of self-examination, fussing with the words that he writes, agonizing over ideas, worried that he is either too critical or not critical enough, careful to avoid the impression that it is a personal motive that prompts him to do what he is doing, has done, or will do. Thus he may not publish a deserving editorial about a school that he once attended, or an organization to which he belongs; at other times he will condemn something of which he is a part but he will not sever his connection with it because this would be a predictable act, and he does not wish to be predictable. As a student editor at Princeton he was critical of the club system, but was a member of a club; as a
Times
editor with a commitment to
the Civil Rights movement, he was personally repulsed by some of the racial policies of the Metropolitan Club in Washington, among other similar organizations, but he did not join the distinguished ranks that quit the club in the early Nineteen-sixties, making headlines: Oakes quit a few years later, quietly, and refused to discuss publicly the reasons for his resignation.

Like most newspaper editors and critics, Oakes does not relish criticism. Should unflattering comments about
The New York Times
, particularly about its editorial page, appear in another journal or magazine, Oakes will quickly send off a letter of reply. His letter will most often attempt to discredit the criticism by dwelling on any errors of fact or interpretation that appeared in the criticism, even if the errors were minor or inconsequential to the larger purpose of the piece. It is not that Oakes is more prissy than other editors are, or must often be; it is rather that he is unable to resist the impulse to lash back whenever there is an attack, however slight, upon something that is very close to his heart. He is thinskinned and intense, a man whose life was made no less complex by the tragedy associated with his birth, by the strong sentimentality for a father reared in a tight family dominated by an older brother, by his name change that requires regular clarification as to who he is, where he stands, how he got there. Oakes accepts all challenges, and his life has been a series of small skirmishes, mostly with himself.

Shortly after returning home from Oxford in 1936, he applied for a job at a Trenton newspaper while wearing an FDR button on his lapel; he got the job, but the editor warned him not to reappear in the office for work until he had removed the button. Oakes was offended by the remark, interpreting it somehow as an affront to his independence, and he waited a few extra days, until after Roosevelt’s reelection, before reporting to the
State Gazette and Trenton Times
without his FDR button. Later, at the Washington
Post
, and still later at
The New York Times
, Oakes seemed unable to decide precisely how he wished to sign his articles, and as a result his by-lines have varied through the years from John Oakes to John B. Oakes, J. B. Oakes to John Bertram Oakes—and some of the articles on conservation that he wrote for
The Times
were signed “by John Bertram.” After he took over
The Times
’ editorial page and began publishing pieces by Tom Wicker, Oakes began to wonder if that by-line was not perhaps too informal, and one day he wrote Wicker inquiring if Thomas Wicker or Thomas G. Wicker
might not be more appropriate. Wicker said he liked his name the way it was.

While John Oakes claims to be pleased that his father changed the name, relieving his family branch of some unnecessary Ochsian weight, he is nonetheless disappointed by his father’s obscurity and the lack of high regard that some members of the family had for him. In a biography about Adolph Ochs written with the cooperation of Iphigene Sulzberger and other close relatives, George was referred to as a “gun-toting dandy.” Adolph himself retained a deep affection for his younger brother throughout his lifetime, but he apparently also sensed in George qualities that were out of harmony with institutionalism, and so he always kept George at a safe distance from the center stage of power. When Ochs began spending more time New York than in the South, he appointed George to manage the
Chattanooga Times
, and he was well satisfied with things until George decided that he wanted to run for mayor. Unable to discourage him, Adolph neither helped him nor did he vote for him. After George had left political life, Adolph offered him a job in Paris to supervise
The New York Times
’ exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900, a responsibility that included the publishing of a daily Paris edition of
The Times
; George accepted this challenge and was very successful, both professionally and socially, moving around town with the international set and promoting
The Times
as well. When the Exposition ended George received from the French government the Legion of Honor.

A year later George went to Philadelphia to run the Ochs newspaper there, a profitable venture that ended in 1913 when Adolph Ochs, becoming increasingly involved in
The Times
’ expansion in New York and remaining sentimentally attached to his paper in Chattanooga, accepted George’s advice and sold the Philadelphia newspaper to Cyrus Curtis for two million dollars, with the stipulation that George be retained as publisher of the Philadelphia paper. But policy differences soon arose between George and Curtis—one of George’s complaints had to do with Curtis’ installing his son-in-law in the business department—and by 1915 George had resigned and was again working for Adolph, this time in New York. George was put in charge of two auxiliary publications of The New York Times Company,
Current History Magazine
and the
Mid-Week Pictorial
, and he had an office on the tenth floor of the
Times
building, the same floor on which John Oakes now supervises
The Times
’ editorial page.