Raymond Ickes; Scion of Democratic Family
Raymond Ickes, 87, retired shipping executive and scion of a politically active Democrat family. His father, Harold L. Ickes, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of the Interior and headed the Depression-era Public Works Administration. His mother, Anna Wilmarth, was a three-term assemblywoman in Illinois, and his half-brother, Harold Ickes, was deputy chief of staff under President Clinton and is now an aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Born and reared in Evanston, Ill., Raymond Ickes spent his summers in New Mexico, where he developed a lifelong interest in American Indian culture and language. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and law degrees from the University of Chicago and in 1939 became an assistant U.S. attorney. He served with the Marines during World War II, earning a Purple Heart and Silver Star after he was wounded on Iwo Jima, and helped gather evidence for the Nuremberg trials in postwar Germany. Although he made his career in business, as president of Natomas Co., Pacific Far East Line and American President Lines, Ickes kept up the family tradition of political involvement. When told he was on then President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,†he said: “This is the greatest honor I’ve received in a long time. A man is as well known by his enemies as by his friends.†On Thursday in Berkeley.
