Journalist Ben Reddick, Onetime O.C. Supervisor, Dies

Newspaper publisher Ben Reddick, the man generally credited with coining the term “Okie,” is dead at the age of 82.

Reddick, who owned newspapers in Newport Beach and served briefly on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, died Thursday in his sleep at a convalescent home in Templeton, his family said.

Reddick started his newspaper career in 1929, when he worked for the Huntington Park Daily Signal. He then moved to the Long Beach Press-Telegram and the Los Angeles Examiner. He worked as a writer, photographer and editor.

While a freelance writer during the Depression, he used the term “Okies” in a piece on the immigration of Dust Bowl refugees into California in the 1930s. The name derived from the fact that cars carrying refugees had license plates issued at the Oklahoma border that started with “OK.”

The term stuck and was made famous by John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Although “Okie” was often used as a slur, the governor of Oklahoma made Reddick an “Honorary Okie” in 1968.

In 1944, Reddick and another reporter purchased the weekly Newport Balboa Press. Reddick became full owner in 1947 and, after buying other newspapers in Newport Beach, he merged them into what became the Newport Harbor News-Press.

After selling the News-Press in 1962, he began publishing the San Fernando Valley Times. He then purchased the Paso Robles Daily Press in 1967, owning and publishing the paper until 1996.

Reddick also dabbled in politics, serving a partial term as an Orange County supervisor in the 1950s. He also served on the State Water Quality Control Board in the 1970s.

The banner running over his editorial pages for many years read: “The government has no money to spend except what it takes from the people.”

He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, of Paso Robles; sons Richard, of Paso Robles, James, of Kanak, Utah, and Randolph, of Simi Valley; 11 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Services were scheduled for Saturday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Atascadero.