Passing of Stephen B. Oates

[David Lockmiller]

Once a prominent figure at conferences and in the media, he retreated from public life. Old friends said they had not heard from him in more than two decades.

I was certainly aware of the controversy, but I did not know about this.

I also thought that was why the Washington Post obituary was so informative. There was another sentence therein that struck me as well:

“I was shattered, blindsided, lying on the floor in public humiliation,” he said in 1991. “Suddenly, I stood accused.”

This statement was made by Professor Oates in the year following the criticism by the English professor and literary critic at Illinois Wesleyan University of his 1952 biography of Lincoln.