George F. Jenks papers

Toledo Blade editor and reporter George Francis Jenks (1908-1988) was born on October 19, 1908, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Frank Jenks (1879-1952) and Julia Pennington (1885-1966). George attended school in Detroit, El Paso, Texas and Colorado Springs, Colorado, before entering Colorado College where he graduated in 1929. Afterwards he came to northwest Ohio as an employee of the Wood County News, Bowling Green, but the paper folded shortly after his arrival. In 1933, he joined the staff of the (Toledo) Blade where he would work for the next forty-two years.

Jenks began mastering his craft as a reporter on general assignments, the police beat, city hall and the Statehouse in Columbus. In 1942, he began his first of three assignments to the Blade’s Washington Bureau. He became bureau chief in 1958 and during his years in Washington traveled extensively, covering political assignments. Most notable among them were as follows: the Bikini Atoll atomic tests in 1946, the 1953 Eisenhower-Churchill conference in Berlin, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Vice President Richard Nixon’s trip to the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower’s “good-will” excursion through Asia and Africa and Nikita Khrushchev’s tour of the United States along with presidential elections from 1944 to 1972. Jenks retired from the Blade in 1975 after a long successful career.

“George Jenks was not only a fine reporter, but an excellent news writer as well,” former Blade managing editor William Rosenberg reminisced. “He was able, better than anyone else with whom I was associated in my years at the Blade, to organize the facts he gathered into an intelligent, readable news story.” He was a member of the National and Toledo Press clubs, the Newspaper Guild, and at one time served as secretary to the Toledo Zoological Society. He married Louise McMahon on July 19, 1937, and had four children: Ann, Judith, G. Michael and Frank. George died on July 7, 1988, in Bowling Green, Ohio.