Diana Oughton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diana Oughton (January 26, 1942 - March 6, 1970) was a member of the 1960s radical group The Weathermen.
Oughton was born in 1942 to James Henry Oughton III (1913-1996) and was raised in Dwight, Illinois. She had a sister: Carol Oughton (1944- ). Her father was a restaurateur. James Henry Oughton II (1882-1935), her grandfather, was president of the Keeley Institute for alcoholics. [1] He died of bullet wounds inflicted by robbers who entered the Institute in Dwight, Illinois in 1935.
She attended the Madeira School in Greenway, Virginia and received a B.A. degree from Bryn Mawr College and spent her junior year of college at the University of Munich. While a graduate student at the University of Michigan, she joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). From July 1963 to August 1965, the American Friends Service Committee employed her as a Vista volunteer in rural Guatemalan villages. When she returned to the United States, she joined the Greenwich Village chapter of the emergent radical-fringe group The Weathermen.
On March 6, 1970, the New York City townhouse that the Weathermen were using as a bomb factory accidentally exploded. The detonations were so powerful that they collapsed the three-story house in on itself. Oughton’s body, identified only through a fingertip, was one of the three mangled bodies discovered after the explosion. Police estimated she was standing within two feet of the explosion, estimated by police to have been composed of eighteen sticks of dynamite. It was understood later that the bombs were to have been detonated at a non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix.
A 1975 TV movie, "Katherine", starring Art Carney, Sissy Spacek, Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner, Jane Wyatt, tells the story of "Katherine Alman", who was from a wealthy San Francisco family, became socially active, served as a teacher of English in South America, then joined a radical "Collective" which had many similarities to the SDS and eventually the Weatherman. The "Collective" protested the Vietnam War, invaded a High School, Held a "War Council" and eventually split into peaceful and violent factions. The story ended with Katherin's death, due to the bombing of a government building that did not go as planned.
[edit] References
- Diana: The Making of a Terrorist by Thomas Powers (Houghton Mifflin 1971), ISBN 0-395-12375-5
- Time (magazine); Monday, March 30, 1970; Memories of Diana. Diana was born on January 26, 1942, and raised in Dwight (population 3,100), a town set in the prairie cornfields of northern Illinois. Her conservative, Episcopal family is one of the community's most prominent. Her paternal great-great-grandfather [Note: James Henry Oughton I (c1860-?) would be her great-grandfather] established the Keeley Institute for alcoholics. Her maternal great-grandfather, W.D. Boyce, founded the American Boy Scouts. James Oughton, 55, Diana's father, is a Dartmouth graduate and restaurateur. Diana and her three sisters were cherished and deeply loved. Said her father: "The social life in Dwight has never separated adults from children. Dinner was a family affair, and there was a pretty wide discussion all the way through."
- Double Feature - The Boy in the Plastic Bubble - Katherine #03877 (PC Treasures, Inc. 2006, 2765 Metamora Rd. Oxford, MI 48371) [Note: 1975 Fictionalized TV Movie "Based on a True Story" - Written and Directed by Jeremy Kagan. The movie mixes drama with documentary style commentaries, and authentic audio/video footage of the period.]
