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Obituary: James W. Knox / Former Allegheny County controller, longtime fixture in local politics
Wednesday, January 02, 2002 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
James W. Knox, who was elected Allegheny County controller at age 28 and spent the next half-century in the rough-and-tumble world of Pennsylvania politics, died Sunday.
Mr. Knox, who was 82, had suffered for years from diabetes, heart attacks and a fractured hip. He lived most of his life in Emsworth, but died at Sherwood Oaks care center in Cranberry.
Fresh from Navy service at Normandy and Okinawa in World War II, he jumped into politics in 1946 with a run for Congress. Mr. Knox, a Democrat, lost that race, but fared better the next year, winning the controller's office. The controller had always been a Republican until Mr. Knox's breakthrough.
He served as controller for 20 years, building alliances with two of the most powerful Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s.
Mr. Knox became a confidant of Gov. David L. Lawrence and the driver for John F. Kennedy when the latter visited Pittsburgh as a young Massachusetts congressman and senator.
"I first met JFK in 1946, before he was elected to Congress," Mr. Knox remembered in an interview 50 years later. "He was flying in to Pittsburgh to speak to the Young Democrats and I was asked to go out to the airport to pick him up. From then on, every time Kennedy came to Pittsburgh, he would call and I'd pick him up."
Mr. Knox broadened his own power base with his election in 1964 as Democratic Party chairman of Allegheny County. But that job sent his own career into a downward spiral, said former Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff.
"He was one of the most completely honest people I've ever met, and it cost him," Masloff said.
She said Mr. Knox's by-the-book approach made enemies. He lost the controller's office in 1967, beaten in a stunning upset by former Pirates pitcher Bob Friend, a Republican.
Mr. Knox continued to make his living through political appointments, but controversy followed him.
He was hired in 1968 as executive director of the county housing authority. A decade later, he was fired after a federal report criticized his administration, saying it had allowed slum-like conditions in some of the publicly subsidized units.
Mr. Knox sued, claiming his ouster was political retribution by county commissioners Jim Flaherty and Robert N. Peirce. His case dragged on for seven or eight years before he received a settlement, said his daughter, Jennie-Lynn Knox of Emsworth.
After a new Democratic regime swept into office in 1979, Mr. Knox surfaced again, this time as county planning director. He held that job until 1984. Then he was assigned to oversee the county's attempts to begin supplying hydroelectric power.
That effort, in which the county sought licenses to run power plants on the Ohio and Allegheny rivers, ultimately failed.
Mr. Knox retired from government service in 1992. Even so, he could not stay out of the political wars.
He fought the move in 1998 to change Allegheny County's government to a chief executive and 15-member County Council. After voters narrowly approved the change, Mr. Knox was one of 44 people to sue in hopes of stopping it. He claimed, unsuccessfully, that the process violated the state Constitution.
Though politics consumed him, Mr. Knox found time to be passionate about other parts of life.
He worked to preserve old buildings and was a leading figure in developing the Nationality Rooms program at the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning. Mr. Knox, who graduated from Pitt in 1942 with degrees in economics and political science, helped raise thousands of dollars for scholarships and to renovate the Nationality Rooms, which promote international study.
He authored books on life in Emsworth and his war experiences as commander of an LST (Landing Ship-Tank) known as Ol' Double Trouble. The ship, a shoebox-shaped craft that was as long as a football field but only 50 feet wide, got its nickname because it was used in both theaters of war.
He recently finished another book on his experiences with Gov. Lawrence. It has yet to be published.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Knox is survived by his wife, Valerie of Emsworth; two sons, Christopher of Ohio Township and Ronald of San Francisco; a sister, Jennie M. Lewis of Emsworth; and five grandchildren.
His body was cremated. A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Jan. 12 at St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church in Emsworth.
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