Dale C. Maley: Kramers were a newspaper family

In 1901, James Patterson started work at The Blade newspaper as a "printer's devil." His assignment was to clean the messy printing presses and perform other odd jobs.

Mr. Patterson worked 53 years at The Blade. He worked his way up the ladder until he became the editor and owned one-half of the newspaper. The other half of The Blade was owned by Frank Phelps, Cora Evans and I.L. Harris. In 1948, James Patterson retired, and The Blade was eventually sold to Donovan Kramer. Mr. Kramer owned The Blade and was the editor until 1962, when James "Jim" Roberts bought the newspaper.

The family story of Donovan Mershon Kramer began with the birth of John Andrew Kramer in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1820. John A. Kramer grew up in Germany and served six years in the German army. In 1846, at the age of 26, John Kramer emigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania. He immediately joined Company E of the First Pennsylvania Regiment and fought in the 1846-1848 Mexican War. Unfortunately, during the siege of Vera Cruz, John was wounded by a shell that exploded near his right knee. This injury caused paralysis of his right side, including deafness and blindness of the right ear and eye. He was discharged from the military in 1847.

Because of his service in the Mexican War, John Kramer received 160 acres of land in Jefferson County, Iowa. In 1849, John Kramer married Miss Margaret Schnouder. John and Margaret Kramer had three children. Margaret Kramer died in 1860, and in 1861 Mr. Kramer married Miss Mary J. Sage. John and Mary Kramer then had 11 children.

One of John and Mary Kramer's children was James Perry Kramer, born in Iowa in 1881. James Kramer married Alice Myrtle "Allie" Walker in 1903. One of the children of James and Allie Kramer was Verle V. Kramer. He was born in 1905 in Iowa. Verle married Sybil Mershon.

Verle Kramer became a newspaperman and, at the time of his death in 1968, was living in Gibson City. When Verle died at the age of 63, he was president of the National Newspaper Association. He had also been named a "master editor" by the Southern Illinois Editorial Association. Mr. Kramer owned, published and edited weekly newspapers in Gibson City, Monticello, Saybrook, Colfax, LeRoy, Chenoa and Lexington. Verle and Sybil Kramer had two sons.

One son of Verle and Sybil Kramer was Donovan Mershon Kramer. He was born in 1925 and served in the Army Air Corps from 1944 until 1946 during World War II. Donovan then graduated from the University of Illinois in 1948 with a degree in journalism. While attending the University of Illinois, Donovan was a member of the Sigma Delta Chi group, which is now the Society of Professional Journalists.

After graduating from college, Donovan became the editor and publisher of the Fairbury Blade in 1948. In 1949, Donovan Kramer married Ruth Aileen Heins at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Chenoa. Ruth rode her pony every day to a country school near Weston as a young girl.

Ruth Heins graduated from Bradley University and the Presbyterian School of Nursing in Chicago. She was employed at the Langstaff Clinic when she married Donovan. Donovan and Ruth Kramer had four children.

Ruth A. Heins also has a fascinating family tree. Her great-grandfather, Christian Jacobs (1833-1911), emigrated from Germany to Bloomington in 1854. Two years later, Christian settled on a farm in Yates Township, McLean County, just west of Fairbury. The children of Christian Jacobs and Christiana Dorothea Sophia "Lucy" Wahls had to ride their horses out to protect their livestock from wolves. The children also collected the eggs from prairie chickens. One of these children later joked the prairie chickens disappeared because they collected all of their eggs.

Maria Johanna Sophia "Mary" Jacobs was the daughter of Christian and Lucy Jacobs. She married Friedrich Karl Wilhelm Wollenzien in 1887. Friedrich and Mary Jacobs had four children. Unfortunately, Friedrich Wollenzien died in 1907 when he was only 45 years old on a farm near Weston. He was killed when he was helping to move a farm building. Friedrich reached underneath to straighten a roller and became caught and killed.

When Friedrich Wollenzien died, his widow was plagued with tuberculosis. She had to spend much of her time in a sanitarium. This situation left the three surviving children to keep the farm running. Ella was 12 years old, Clarence was 14 years old, and Martha was 18 years of age. Young Clarence would hitch up teams of draft horses by himself and then plow the fields. They were successful, and the farm is still in the family.

In 1917, 21-year-old Ella Wollenzien married 26-year-old Louis Jakob Heins in Chenoa. Louis and Ella Heins had two children. Ella Heins joined a woman's social club called the Jolly Girls. Eighteen Weston girls had meetings where they knitted scarves for the soldiers in World War I. After the war ended, the girls met twice a month to play cards.

Donovan Kramer successfully managed the Fairbury Blade newspaper from 1948 until 1962. Under Don Kramer, The Blade continued its steady upward climb in quality until it reached the much-coveted rating of best weekly or semi-weekly in Illinois. This honor, the Will Loomis Trophy, was awarded to The Blade in 1960 by the Illinois Press Association.

After vacationing in Arizona, the Kramer family decided to sell The Blade to Jim Roberts and move to Arizona. Donovan and Ruth Kramer bought the Casa Grande Dispatch and converted it from a weekly newspaper to a daily newspaper. They also bought weekly newspapers in Eloy, Coolidge, Florence and the White Mountains. They opened new newspapers in Arizona City and Maricopa.

Donovan Kramer passed away in 2009 at the age of 84. He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Casa Grande, Arizona. Ruth Kramer's ancestors were pioneer settlers of the Fairbury area. Donovan Kramer and his father were both newspapermen who managed many newspapers in Central Illinois and Arizona.

This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Verle Kramer The Blade Dale C. Maley column Jim Roberts