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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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So this business came up again, and in August of '69, Punch sent me a note, in response to one or more of mine, which he found on returning from a fishing trip, and he wrote this pregnant sentence in his note to me, dated August 6, 1969, - by this time I was on vacation, he wrote it to the Vineyard - “I will go to work on the Op-Ed page.”

That, and he made good on that, because now, in the summer and fall of '69, was when serious work on the Op-Ed page was resumed, after this lapse of two years, really more than two years. It had been on ice all this time.

Q:

What was there to resume? You'd already done the dummies.

Oakes:

But we had to have more discussions, and to resume, what that meant was to crank up the idea again, and kind of persuade, if possible, the news department that we really needed one and were going to have one.

On August 18th, 1969, I wrote Punch back, that -

Q:

This is while you were on the Vineyard?

Oakes:

Yes, from vacation - “Thanks very much for your note re pursuing the Op-Ed idea. as you know, I feel that this would be an extremely important qualitative addition to the NYT” - etc., etc.





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