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Daily Courier owner John Voorhies dies at age 90 John Voorhies Thursday Oct 27, 2016 at 11:27 AM Oct 27, 2016 at 11:27 AM By Jeff DuewelGrants Pass Daily Courier John Voorhies, the owner of the Grants Pass Daily Courier for the past 45 years, and whose family has owned the paper for 119 years, died early Monday morning at the age of 90. The man who over the years held just about every job at the Daily Courier as he grew up in the three-generation business fell ill a week ago and never left the hospital, his wife, Sylvia, said on Monday. Private family services will be held. She said the Daily Courier will continue to be a Voorhies-owned newspaper, and now she'll be signing the paychecks. She has been on the company's board of directors for three decades. "He's planned that for years, as far as handing it down," Sylvia said on Monday. "The last thing I told John was, 'I'm going to make you proud.'" John Voorhies started delivering the paper at age 11, and said he worked for only one other employer, the Register-Guard in Eugene, while he was a college student at the University of Oregon — unless you count a brief stint at the hopyards west of town. "I picked hops for one day and decided I was never going to do that again," Voorhies said during a 2008 interview. When Daily Courier photographer Bob Hambly was drafted during World War II, Voorhies got out of high school at noon to do photo-engraving at the Courier. That was among the long list of his duties over the years. He sold advertising, wrote news articles, stuffed inserts, operated the printing press, and "poured the pigs" when type still was fashioned by hot lead in the pre-electronic age. He even cleaned restrooms at one time, according to his daughter, Sandy. The newspaper began in 1885 as the Rogue River Courier, and changed hands seven times in the first 12 years. John's grandfather Amos "Boss" Voorhies bought the paper in 1897, and the name changed to the Grants Pass Daily Courier in 1910. Earle — Amos' son and John's father — joined the Daily Courier in 1925. Earle and John became co-publishers in 1960 when Amos died, and John became sole publisher in 1971 when Earle died. John went into semi-retirement in 1992 when Dennis Mack was named publisher, but he remained a presence at the paper. As recently as mid-September, he attended a meeting of the Daily Courier editorial board to participate in selecting which candidates the newspaper would endorse in the 2016 general election. John had a hand in everything, similar to his father and grandfather. "He was a bridge between what Amos did and the present," said his daughter Sandy. "He took the Courier from all the old equipment and brought it into today's world. And he spent so much of his heart doing it." It was always important to John for the Daily Courier to be a community paper owned by the family, and not part of a corporate chain. "We used to get three or four offers a year (to sell)," Voorhies said in 2008. "When Dad died in '71, that's when I started telling them I'd never sell the SOB. I had my mind made up we weren't going to chain up." Voorhies said as publisher he never tried to influence how things came out in Grants Pass, and said he didn't write more than a dozen editorials over the years — "Only when I got so mad I couldn't stand it." In 1998 Voorhies wrote a letter to the editor of his own newspaper, expressing dismay over the name-calling over the fate of Savage Rapids Dam. Daily Courier Editor Kevin Widdison vouched for Voorhies' integrity. "In my 17 years as city editor and now more than three years as editor, John and I had many conversations — and we didn't always see eye to eye," Widdison said. "But never once did he try to sway our coverage. And, as far as the editorial page goes, he always insisted that everyone's opinions be treated with respect." Travis Moore, who took over as publisher when Mack retired in 2015, said, "His legacy as a great newspaperman stands out to me." In a special edition published in 2002, Voorhies wrote with pride about the history of the Daily Courier. He noted that his grandfather made the Courier the first weekly in Oregon to install a typesetting machine, prior to 1910, when it began publishing six days a week. Soon after, the Courier became "the smallest city in the world with a leased newswire," Voorhies wrote. At the end of his article, Voorhies wrote, "It isn't the equipment, the building, or the publisher or the bank balance. It's people. The community. The staff." When World War II hit, John's duties expanded. After time in the Army Air Corps, he pursued a degree in journalism at the University of Oregon, where he didn't always agree with the dean on how a daily newspaper should be run. During the summers, Voorhies worked in the circulation and advertising departments at the Daily Courier. He came back for good in 1950. Voorhies loved golf, was a member of the Grants Pass Golf Club, and was instrumental in getting the course established. For three decades he and Sylvia wintered in the golf haven of La Quinta, Calif. He shot 89 this past year, and he played on a recent trip to Hawaii, Sylvia said. In July of 2008 he broke his age in golf, considered a milestone in the sport, by shooting a 79 at Tokatee as an 82-year-old. He duplicated that feat on more than one occasion. John was known to share drinks with fellow golfers, but in 1993 he quit drinking — something he spoke of with pride. In 2008, he said, "My life has been a bed of roses since then." He also quit smoking in 2007, after a couple of failed attempts in earlier years. "It just wasn't right to run a paper without smoking," he said in 2008. "Too much pressure." Voorhies was involved in a variety of community institutions, including most prominently Evergreen Federal Bank, Rogue Community College and the Grants Pass Golf Club. Other involvements have included the Chamber of Commerce, United Way, the city water board, the Boy Scouts, the Active Club and Rotary. He was a historic resource for reporters at the newspaper. "Both the Courier and the community are losing a sense of history," said Mack, the former publisher and vice president of the company. "He was just a real person, and operated by doing what was right for the family and the community. And he did it well." In 2003 John expressed his sentiments about his business and this community, in another article. "Of all the things I might be proud of, I'm a whole lot prouder of the product and the people who created it," Voorhies said. Reach reporter Jeff Duewel at 541-474-3720 or [email protected].