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Mississippi Press - Pascagoula, MS - October 10, 2006
OBITUARIES

Ira B. Harkey, Jr.

Funeral services for Dr. Ira B. Harkey Jr., 88, former New Orleans and Mississippi newspaperman will be held on Friday, Oct. 13, 2006, at 3 p.m. in the Chapel of Lakelawn Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Services will also be held on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 10, 2006, at the First United Methodist Church in Kerrville, Texas.

Harkey died from complications of Parkinson's Disease on Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006, at 12:50 a.m. at Parsons House in Kerrville, Texas. He had been a resident at Parsons House for nearly two years.

In 1963 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials in the Pascagoula, Miss. Chronicle, of which he was editor and publisher from 1948 to 1963. He began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans while a junior at Tulane University in 1940.

Among other honors were the Society of Professional Journalists' medal for outstanding national newspaper public service, a media award from the National conference of Christians and Jews, and the Silver Em Award from the University of Mississippi. The Silver Em honors a broadcast or print journalist whose career exemplifies the highest ideals of American journalism.

In 1992 he was given the annual libertarian award of the Mississippi Civil Liberties Union, and the following year was elected to the Mississippi Newspaper Association hall of fame.

Harkey was born in New Orleans Jan. 15, 1918. He was a graduate of Isidore Newman School, attended New Mexico Military Institute, graduated from Tulane and held masters and doctoral degrees from Ohio State University.

He was author of five books, including "The Smell of Burning Crosses," an account of his 14-year participation in the Mississippi civil rights battles. He published many magazine articles.

He intended to be a teacher, but in 1942 left Tulane graduate school to join the US Navy, in which he served as a lieutenant in air combat intelligence and as a mobile correspondent in the Pacific.

In 1946 he returned to The Times-Picayune as a magazine writer, and in 1948 bought the Pascagoula newspaper, a weekly. In 1957 he converted it to a semi-weekly, to a daily in 1962.

After selling the Chronicle in 1963, Harkey wrote his autobiographical book and went to Ohio State University as a journalism teacher. In the late 1960s and 1970s he was a Carnegie Foundation professor at the University of Alaska and professional lecturer at the universities of Montana and Oregon. Until 1993 he lectured at various colleges, universities and before other organizations.

Since 1977 Harkey had lived near Kerrville, Texas.

His other books are "Pioneer Bush Pilot: the Story of Noel Wien," a biography of the first aviator to tame the Alaska Arctic; "Alton Ochsner: Surgeon of the South," with co-author John Wilds of New Orleans; "Dedicated to the Proposition," a brief summary of his editorial activities during and after the James Meredith crisis at the University of Mississippi; and "Mississippi Sounds," story of a family of six that moved from the big city to a small town.

He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Kappa Epsilon, the American Association of University Professors and the American Political Science Association. He was a member of the Louisiana Club and had been a member of the Boston Club for 65 years.

Surviving are his widow, the former Virgia Ouin Mioton of New Orleans and seven children, five of whom live in Mississippi, Ira, III in Ocean Springs, Meg Harkey Walters and Amelie Harkey Foster of Gautier, Erik Gore Harkey of Columbia and William Millsaps Harkey of Pascagoula and Maybin Harkey of Beaumont, Texas, and Katherine A. Kibby of Minneapolis, Minn. Also he is survived by a sister, Eleanor Harkey Wheeler of Norfolk, Va.; 13 grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; eight stepchildren; and several nieces.

In lieu of flowers please make contributions to The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, Grand Central Station, P.O. Box 4777, New York, New York 10163

The family invites you to send condolences at www.-grimesfuneralchapels.com by selecting the "Send Condolences" link.

Funeral arrangements are entrusted to Grimes Funeral Chapels of Kerrville.