Ray M. Price (1903)

PRICE, COOPER

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 3/21/2006 at 10:37:04

Winterset Reporter
Winterset, Iowa
March 1903

Ray M. Price, the editor of the REPORTER, after a long and very painful illness died at his home in Winterset on March 23rd, 1903.

Ray was born in Earlham, this county October 3d, 1872. He died a young man. Ray was quick to learn when a boy and obtained an excellent education which he supplemented by extensive general reading. His health was never robust and hence he was barred from many boyish sports but his interest in them never lagged and he was an authority among the boys on the rules of games. His mind was inventive and he was always devising improvements in methods. He had the warmest sympathy for the poor and unfortunate. No tramp was ever turned away from his door hungry. He had but few intimates but these were true friends. He impressed strangers as being a proud man but better acquaintance entirely dissipated such impressions. He was always the true friend of labor and no one could treat his employees better than he.

Ray has edited the REPORTER five years. He took it under adverse circumstances and in ill health. He worked hard when most men in his physical condition would have rested. His ambition was to make a clean local paper fit to go into every family. The course of the REPORTER on all moral questions has been above reproach. On all public measures the course of the REPORTER has been in keeping with the character of the man. He took great pains to inform himself on men and measures, but having formed an opinion he boldly advocated it in the REPORTER regardless of the threats of interested persons or the advice of friends to be prudent. As a friend he could be relied upon. When attacked in a low and vulgar way, which he was a few times by persons who could not cope with him in argument, he passed it by as unworthy of notice. Ray was a terse writer and his editorials were largely quoted by other papers.

His strength of character shone in his last illness when suffering, the intensest pain and looking death in the face, he tried so hard to save others trouble and was cheerful beyond belief and when the death pains were on him he said, "Am I bearing it bravely?" He said he had no fear of death. He is gone. Those who knew him best loved him most.
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Winterset Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
March 26, 1903
Page 1, column 2

Ray Price is Dead

Ray Price, editor and publisher of the Winterset Reporter, died at his home, the Price homestead on east Court Avenue, at about 8 o’clock p.m., Monday, March 23, after an illness of nearly three months duration. Deceased was born at Earlham, in this county, and at the time of his death was a little past thirty years of age. While he was but a child his parents removed to Monroe, Jasper county, from which place they removed to Winterset about 1879. Here Ray grew to manhood. Never of strong constitution, he drifted about for a few years, going south and west in search of health, and about 1898 became interested in the Reporter, first with A. L. Wood, then S. D. Alexander, and since the spring of 1899 as sole proprietor. In the fall of that year he was married to Miss Rose Cooper, who with one child survives him.

Mr. Price had considerable ability, and was a man of unique and original ways, and, while somewhat erratic, was an honorable business man, a kind and faithful husband and a good citizen.

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