Warren Olney

Four members of the same family, all named Warren Olney, have been prominent in Californian history.

Warren Olney was born March 11, 1841 near the Fox River in frontier Iowa. Raised in abject poverty and with little formal schooling, he learned his lessons well enough to become a teacher, superintendent of schools, and a college freshman, oddly enough, in that order. During that time, one of the students in his school was a young future western hero, Wyatt Earp.

Like all other fit males of his college, Olney enlisted in the Union army and served in the American Civil War. He served in Missouri, then fought at the battle of Shiloh/Pittsburg's Landing where a spent bullet knocked him unconscious and got him mistakenly reported killed. He then became a headquarters clerk and in 1864 got a commission as captain commanding a company in the United States Colored [sic] Infantry. He served with this organization without seeing more combat through the remainder of the war, and taking his discharge in August 1865.

He married his college sweetheart and went to the University of Michigan there earning a degree in law. In 1868, he and his bride sailed from New York for San Francisco, California where he started with a noted law firm. He quickly developed a keen interest in the outdoors, and was involved in the creation of the Sierra Club, an organization dedicated to conservation in the Sierra Mountains. They held their early meetings in his law office, he wrote its first charter and was its vice president and close personal friend of John Muir. He was Mayor of Oakland from 1903 to 1905. A tough choice over damming a river valley for public water forced a break between him and his close friend and a parting of the ways from the Sierra club. He died at 80 years of age in 1921 after a full life of public service.

Olney's son and grandson, who shared his name, were also lawyers. Warren Olney II served on the Supreme Court of California from 1919 to 1921 and Warren Olney III was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as an Assistant Attorney General to oversee the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice.

Journalist

Warren Olney IV is the host and executive producer of the nationally syndicated PRI program "To the Point" as well as the long-running local affairs show "Which Way, L.A.?", both of which originate at Santa Monica public radio station KCRW. Olney, with his encyclopedic memory of events, places, and people, is considered an authority on Southland affairs. A graduate of Amherst College, Olney has also developed and taught laboratory courses at USC. He is the only two-time winner of the Los Angeles Society of Professional Journalists Distinguished Journalist since it was first awarded in 1976. He received it in 1985 for his work with KABC-TV and in 1998 for his work with KCRW. [http://www.spj.org/losangeles/awards.html]

External links

* [http://www.sierraclub.org/history/key_figures/olney.asp Sierra Club biography of Warren Olney I]
* [http://www.kcrw.com/show/tp KCRW page]