From about age 10 to 16 Oaks and his younger brother and sister spent the school year in Vernal, Utah and the summer in Payson, Utah with his maternal grandparents while his mother pursued her graduate degree at Columbia. During these years his mother was a high school teacher in Vernal. Oaks obtained his first job at the age of twelve at a radio repair shop in Vernal sweeping the floors. He later worked as an engineer and announcer for stations in both Vernal (KJAM) and Provo (KCSU). He had obtained his first-class radio operator license in the spring of 1948.