Robert Novak - Early Life and Early Career

Early Life and Early Career

Novak was born in Joliet, Illinois, the son of Jane Sanders and Maurice Novak, a chemical engineer. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine, and his mother's family was from Lithuania. Novak's parents where secular Jews who had little interaction with their local Jewish community and rarely attended religious services. Neighbors considered Novak's family to be Polish. Novak suffered from chronic bronchitis through his early childhood, which led his mother to drive him to and from school instead of letting him walk. Because of the constant family attention, his cousins mockingly called him "Baby Jesus". Novak also loved to tease, offend, and shock his family from an early age, and he later compared himself to French rebel Bertrand de Born.

Novak's journalism career began when he was in high school as a student-writer for the Joliet Herald-News, his hometown newspaper, and he received ten cents per inch. After high school, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI) from 1948 to 1952. His father had attended the college, and he later remarked that "I was an Illini from birth". He became a brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, which caters to Jewish students, while attending the University of Illinois. Novak would later use the group's 'secret handshake' whenever he met fellow alumnus Wolf Blitzer.

He continued gaining journalism experience as a sports writer for the Daily Illini (DI), the college's student newspaper. Novak's wrote how his disappointment about not being named the paper's main sports editor for the 1951-52 school year (he lost the job to Tony Garcia) led him to skip his senior classes and to work full time for the Champaign-Urbana Courier. After four years at the University, Novak left it to become a full-time journalist without a degree, even though he was only one course short of the requirements. In 1993, a college Dean determined that four mandatory physical education classes that Novak had gone through for no credit should constitute enough credit hours, and Novak received his Bachelors Degree. Novak later described his academic achievements as "very uneven." He spoke at the university's May 1998 commencement, and in his speech he credited the college for bringing him up from working class immigrant status into the American middle class.

During the Korean War, Novak served in the U.S. Army, and he reached the rank of lieutenant. He later stated that he had fully expected to die in the service. After serving from 1952 to 1954, he joined the Associated Press (AP) and became a political correspondent in Omaha, Nebraska. He was transferred to Lincoln, Nebraska and then to Indianapolis, Indiana, covering the two state legislatures in his reporting. In 1957, Novak was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he reported on Congress. He left the AP to join the D.C. bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1958, covering the Senate. He rose to the rank of chief congressional correspondent in 1961. He generally did his work without using a tape recordings or paper notes, relying just on his detailed memory. Novak's colleagues at The Wall Street Journal later said that he absorbed himself in his work so completely that he often forgot to shave, left his shoes untied, and even started accidentally placing burning cigarettes into his pockets.