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Notable New     Yorkers
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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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him whatsoever, and he was just really not getting anywhere in his hope to be sent abroad as a foreign correspondent to Russia or to anywhere else. But he determined he would go there on his own money, so he was saving every last cent he could and even doing some work on his days off. So on one of his days off he volunteered--his expenses would be paid of course-- to cover the landing of the Hindenburg that day at Lakehurst, and this was just a routine job that he thought might as well go over, he liked airships, and it would pay his expenses for that day. He went to Lakehurst and that, of course, was the day that the Hindenburg blew up as it landed. And he wrote a sensational story about it, sensationally good. It was a story that beat the other service, and he wrote a running story that was an extremely good story under what were of course very difficult conditions. So a few days later, the Associated Press, after praising him to the sky, asked him what he wanted to do and he said the only thing he wanted to do was to go to the foreign desk and go to Russia. They pulled him up to the foreign desk in a very short time as a reward for this great thing, after having truly ignored him for years; and the next thing he knew he was sent off to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War, and he didn't even know the difference between Spain and Portugal. He had absolutely no knowledge of that. That was the last I heard of him, covering the Spanish Civil War. But I merely recite this to show the hazards of the trade; you can't possibly tell what is going to happen. I certainly had no set plan. But after a year in Trenton I thought it was time to try to get out of Trenton, so I managed to get a job that proved to be a very fortunate thing for me, as a reporter for the Washington Post in the fall of '37. I went down to Washington, which was a good thing to do.

Q:

And you were there until '41.





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