His father, a coal miner and carpenter, and mother, who worked as a domestic, both of Slovak heritage, were educated only to the sixth grade. When his grandparents emigrated from Slovakia, the family name was Vlk, but gradually mutated into Wilkes, perhaps because his father worked in coal mines near Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. In order to pay for college, Wilkes worked full time in various factory and trucking jobs during his undergraduate days at Marquette University, barely earning a sufficient grade point average to earn his BA in Journalism. He then entered the U.S. Navy as a communications and operations officer, serving from 1961 to 1964 on board USS POWER (DD-839). He traveled throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East and as far east as Sri Lanka. He participated in the blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the Officer of the Deck when POWER turned back a freighter carrying contraband Russian missile parts to Cuba. After his military service, he was a reporter for two years for the Boulder Daily Camera. He then graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1967, and worked at the Baltimore Sun for two years before becoming a free-lance writer. In addition to the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and The Atlantic, he has written for numerous other publications. He has written over twenty books. He was a visiting writer at many universities, including Columbia, Clark, Holy Cross, Boston University, Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has been honored for his body of work with a Distinguished Alumni Award from Columbia, the Byline Award from Marquette, and Man of the Year from his high school, Cathedral Latin in Cleveland. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wilmington (NC) Star News. Books Fitzgo: The Wild Dog of Central Park, nonfiction (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973) These Priests Stay, biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973) You Don't Have to Be Rich to Own a Brownstone, nonfiction (New York: Quadrangle, 1973) Trying Out the Dream: A Year in the Life of an American Family, nonfiction (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975) Six American Families, biography (New York: United Church of Christ, 1977) Merton: By Those Who Knew Him Best, biography (San Francisco: Harper, 1984) In Mysterious Ways: The Death and Life of a Parish Priest, biography (New York: Random House, 1990) Companions along the Way, essays (Chicago: