Martin Shelby Ochs

Martin Shelby Ochs, 84, former editor of The Chattanooga Times at the height of the civil rights movement, died on Monday, January 21, 2008, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Under his editorial direction, The Times was one of two metropolitan newspapers in the South to support the Supreme Court's decision against racial segregation in public schools. He was an environmentalist and an avid fisherman.

He was born in Chattanooga in 1923, the only son of Adolph Shelby Ochs and Rose Kirkpatrick Martin.

He is survived by his daughters, Patricia Ochs and her husband, Brian Manning, of Maisons Laffitte, France, Celia Martin Ochs of Alexandria, Virginia and Shelby Ochs Owen and her husband, Stephen Owen, of Staunton, Virginia; as well as seven grandchildren, Madeline and Lily Manning, Claire and Molly McNabb and Graham, Emily and Sam Owen.

His wife, Celia Latimer Ochs, died in May 2007.

Ochs graduated from Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was president of the senior class and chairman of the Honor Council. He attended Princeton University in the Class of 1945, sang in the glee club and was literary editor of the Whig-Cliosophic Society. He received a B.A. in 1947 after he returned from World War II. He received a masters degree in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia in 1976, and a Ph.D from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt in 1984.

In the Army in 1942 he was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry at Ft. Benning, Georgia. He was assigned to Intelligence and commanded an Order of Battle team in the European theater.

At the Chattanooga Times he was a sports writer, copy editor, assistant city editor and assistant managing editor. In 1950 he became a correspondent for The New York Times based in London, Berlin and Paris. In 1952, the year of his marriage, he returned as associate editor and then at 34, became editor of The Chattanooga Times.

After leaving The Times, Ochs traveled the world, writing for International Wildlife Magazine. He came to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1971, first as a speechwriter for the president of the University of Virginia and then as information director at the University's Health Center. He also taught at Piedmont Community College in Charlottesville.

In 1979, Ochs was appointed professor of mass communications at the American University in Cairo. He was chairman of the department for much of the decade he resided there. He was the author of "The African Press" in 1984, the product of research in seven African countries. He took a sabbatical year in 1984 after being named the Edward J. Meeman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tennessee.

A funeral service will be held 10 a.m. Friday, January 25, 2008, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Ivy, Virginia.