TOM JAQUES 1927 to 2010

JAQUES, HOWARD, ROBINSON, THOMAS, NELSON, BRANDON, MOHLER

Posted By: James Mincks (email)
Date: 9/15/2010 at 20:13:17

Tom Jaques, a loyal, no-nonsense, old-school newspaperman who helped guide The Register-Guard for almost four decades, died Friday in a Canby assisted-living facility after a 15-year battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 82.

"Tom was one of those who had real institutional memory," Register-Guard Editor and publisher Tony Baker said. Jaques could reel off an address, a name or someone's title, without looking it up. "You could look at those as small contributions, but they were really important at the time," said Baker, who joined the Baker-family-owned newspaper in 1979.

"And he always had the newspaper and the family's best interest in mind," Baker said.

A memorial service will be held at United Lutheran Church, 2230 Washington St. in Eugene, at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Jaques was hired as a night wire editor at The Register-Guard in January 1952, five months before he graduated from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism. On graduation he was hired as a fulltime copy editor. He would retire from the paper 39 years later, in January 1991, having spent his final 15 years as an assistant managing editor.

Jaques also served as a reporter covering city and county government from 1953 to 1960, as an assistant city editor from 1960 to 1968, and as city editor from 1968 to 1976 before becoming the first in the newspaper's history to hold the title of assistant managing editor.

"He wasn't flashy, but he was a really good city editor," said Don Bishoff, a former reporter, editor and columnist at The Register-Guard, who worked with Jaques for 31 years. "He was a down-to-earth kind of guy."

During his eight years as the paper's city editor, the key newsroom position that supervised the reporting staff and guided coverage, Jaques oversaw some of the biggest local news stories of the day. On his retirement, Jaques recalled that some of the highlights of his career were the paper's coverage of tense anti-Vietnam demonstrations on the UO campus; the "Big Snow" of 1969 that brought Lane County to a standstill for a couple of weeks that January; and the manhunt for escaped murderer Carl Bowles in 1974.

He was not your stereotypical demanding city editor, Bishoff said. His was a softer approach, but one that was no less effective. "Tom was just a gentle soul," Bishoff said.

Jaques was born on Dec. 5, 1927, on a farm near Altoona, Iowa. He grew up in Des Moines and enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school in 1946. After two years of service, he landed in Grants Pass before enrolling at the UO, where he met Gladys Robinson, the woman he would marry in 1952. Gladys Robinson Jaques died in 2004.

Former Register-Guard reporter and editor Doug Bates, who recently retired from The Oregonian and moved back to his hometown of Oakridge, recalled pestering Jaques for a reporting job after graduating from the UO in 1968. But Jaques told Bates that The Register-Guard generally did not hire reporters straight out of college.

So Bates got a job at the now-defunct Spokane Daily Chronicle, then sent Jaques his story clips a year later. Jaques called and offered an interview, and Bates joined The Register-Guard's staff as a reporter in 1969.

"So I had a very warm feeling about Tom," said Bates, who went on to make his mark at The Register-Guard, serving as managing editor from 1985 to 1989, and to earn a Pulitzer Prize at The Oregonian in 2006 for editorial writing.

"Tom was (among) a group of really smart, bright, ambitious young journalists after World War II who went into journalism and helped launch The Register-Guard as the best newspaper of its size in the country," Bates said. "I always looked up to him. He embodied the ideals of the paper. If anybody upheld the standards of the paper, it was Tom. He was an outstanding editor."

Jaques is survived by two daughters, Patricia Nelson of Canby, and Jean Thomas of Gardner, KS; a son, Bob of Portland; two sisters, Grace Brandon of Grants Pass and Gladys Mohler of Long Beach, CA.; and 10 grandchildren.

In addition to his wife, he was preceded in death by two grandchildren.

Remembrances can be made to the National Parkinson's Foundation.

appeared in print: The Register-Guard paper, Saturday, September 11, 2010.