Businessman Brookes

Since Manhattan Lawyer Clarence John Shearn took over the rehabilitation of the Hearst publishing empire, he has done much to restore its financial stability (TIME, March 13). But as William Randolph Hearst's voting trustee and personal representative, Judge Shearn has long felt that a non-Hearst businessman at the head of the Hearst empire would do even more to restore its standing and stability. Last week Judge Shearn found his businessman. John St. Clair Brookes Jr., though almost unknown to the U. S. at large, has already become a power in three top-flight corporations.

Husky John Brookes taught school in Washington for six years to put himself through George Washington University, left in 1913 with a gridiron reputation, an M. A. and LL.B. cum laude. Going to Atlanta as a stranger to practice law, he attracted both friends and clients by acting as line coach for the Georgia Tech football team under famed John William Heisman. In 1917 he went to Pittsburgh to form a legal department for the Mellon-controlled Koppers Co. (coal, coke, gas, tar), rose to be a vice president and director. Through his friend Cyrus Eaton of Republic Steel Corp., he became a Republic director. When in 1932 a change in Koppers management sent John Brookes back to Washington to practice corporation law, he remained a trusted adviser of Republic's present boss, Tom Girdler. In Washington (where he was born in 1888) John Brookes is best known as a partygoer and a golfer who plays with professionals.

Last week, as Lawyer Brookes became president of American Newspapers Inc., top Hearst holding company, he nostalgically recalled that he used to be a newspaperman himself. He was a cub reporter on the Washington Herald in his law-school days, long before Hearst bought & sold the Herald. He has had, however, another and longer connection with the business: the new head of the largest U. S. newsprint consumer has been since 1933 a director of International Paper Co., largest paper company in the world.

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