The Casa Grande Dispatch turned 110 years old in January 2022, and is Casa Grande’s oldest business in operation. The Dispatch has played a significant role in informing the public and helping citizens to form opinions on key issues over the last century. purchased the Dispatch in 1962, and have been the longest owners of the newspaper that went from an afternoon weekly to twice weekly, three time
s, five times before becoming a six-day morning daily. On Jan. 13, 1912, an ambitious, middle-aged businessman named Evans Richardson published the first issue of the Casa Grande Times. Richardson sold the Times after a few months and his 160-acre homestead west of Casa Grande became farmland. The paper’s second editor, John “J.F.” Brown, was Pinal County’s senator in the first State Legislature. In July 1913, the Times was sold to Wainright “Bunny” Randall, who published it until its merger with Angela Hutchinson Hammer’s Casa Grande Valley Dispatch. Hammer, who had previously been partners with Ted Healy at the Casa Grande Bulletin for a time, was truly a pioneering citizen of Arizona. The Bulletin started soon after the Times. After leaving the Bulletin, Hammer became Healy’s competition. As the rivalry between the Bulletin and Dispatch grew over the next several years, so did a feud between Hammer and Healy. “If we got our paper a few days late we’d just grin and say, ‘well I guess ol’ Healy and Hammer had another fight.’”
In time, the Bulletin would sell to the Dispatch and Hammer would sell the Dispatch to the Wrenn family of Florence, but she left behind a legacy of a newspaper that took a position “with love for the purpose and love for the cause,” as she later wrote. In 1985, she was posthumously inducted into the Arizona Newspapers Association Hall of Fame — the first woman to receive the honor. The Wrenn family, long owners of the Florence newspaper, published the Dispatch until the Great Depression forced them to sell in 1930. Grasty, published the paper for less than three months before selling to William R. Matthews and Ralph E. Ellinwood, owners of Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star. After a year, Matthews and Ellinwood realized the weekly newspaper would need a local editor and publisher to continue to flourish. and Jas. Boyd moved to Casa Grande to fill those roles in 1931. After a decade, the Boyds sold the Dispatch to 34-year-old New York newspaperman and Harvard University graduate Thomas L. Robinson in 1941, and a new era began. Robinson, a former political reporter for the New York Times, brought several changes to the paper — including publishing letters to the editor — a custom that hadn’t yet begun at many newspapers at that time. In November 1943, after less than two years in Casa Grande, Robinson joined the Navy and sold the Dispatch to former Douglas Dispatch Editor Fraley McCafferty. After WWII ended, McCafferty sold the Dispatch to Clyde A. Eckman, who had formerly been the publisher of what became the Glendale News Press in Glendale, Calif. Eckman took pride in the newspaper and Casa Grande. During his three years of ownership, he grew the paper to 12 pages and began promoting it as “Pinal’s leading newspaper.”
In July 1948, Carlos and Vera Cleary purchased the Dispatch. Former owner of the Sterling (Ky.) Bulletin, Cleary was described as a conservative businessman and community leader, who opposed rapid growth in the community. In fact, he even opposed a change to dial telephones in the city because he used the operators as his personal answering service. In 1954, Cleary sold the Dispatch to Walter and Gretchen Averill. The Averills turned the newspaper into their family business — both of their daughters, Elizabeth and Virginia, worked at the Dispatch at different times. Over his six years of ownership, Walter installed a new Cox-O-Type printing press, added columnist Guy Acuff and increased the paper’s page count to 20. In March 1960, the Averills sold the Dispatch to Don Soldwedel and his father-in-law, F.F. McNaughton, whose family were partners in several newspapers including the Yuma Sun, Prescott Courier and three daily newspapers in Illinois. The new owners relocated young newspaperman Jim Garner from Pekin, Ill., to be the Dispatch’s general manager. Garner hired Women’s Editor Mary Metzger — whose tenure at the paper would span three decades — and arranged for local artist Paul Modlin to draw caricatures of locals. “Familiar faces by Paul Modlin was definitely a reader-favorite,” Garner later recalled in a column. In 1962, Soldwedel and McNaughton’s Western Newspapers Inc. sold the weekly newspaper to Ruth and Donovan M. of Fairbury, Ill. At the time, Kramer, who was 37, wasn’t unfamiliar with the newspaper business — he had served as publisher of the Fairbury Blade and Forrest News in east central Illinois, and his family also published the nearby Gibson City Courier. In 1963, the Kramers and their four children moved to Casa Grande from Illinois with their 56 Welsh ponies. Production foreman Gary Bishop and his family also moved from Illinois to Casa Grande. Within their first year of ownership, the Kramers moved the Dispatch office to a new printing plant, which had previously been the post office, added a second edition each week and converted to offset printing, which uses a cold type process and eliminates the need for raised-type printing components. Over time, they would increase the Dispatch’s frequency and circulation. Like many of his predecessors, Don Kramer played an active role in the community and on the state level. Along with a few other leaders, he is credited with diversifying the area’s economy by recruiting industrial employers who provided much-needed jobs to over 1,500 people in the 1980s. Kramer was a member of the Board of Freeholders in 1975 when the Casa Grande city charter was adopted, served on the state commerce and transportation boards and received numerous awards for his accomplished newspaper career. Donovan Kramer Sr. remained editor and publisher of the Dispatch until his death in October 2009, and was active in several civic and economic development organizations. “Mr. Kramer and his family have developed a small-town newspaper into a publishing corporation with numerous city newspapers in our county…,” said City Councilman Dick Powell after Kramer’s death. “His legacy is apparent throughout our region and we would not enjoy the quality of life we do had not a young man from Illinois decided to take a chance out West in a small Arizona town called Casa Grande.”
The Kramer family purchased the newspapers in Eloy, Florence and Coolidge in 1967, 1970 and 1971, respectively, and over the next few decades purchased and consolidated two newspapers in Arizona City, and started the Maricopa Monitor and the San Tan Valley Sentinel. The Kramers formed Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. They also own the White Mountain Independent and WMICentral.com and WMITV, covering Show Low, Pinetop-Lakeside, Springerville, St. Johns and Snowflake. The White Mountain Independent was recognized as non-daily Newspaper of the Year in 2014. In mid-2016, the Kramer family purchased The Payson Roundup. The Payson Roundup and Payson.com cover the surrounding Payson Rim Country communities of Star Valley, Pine, Strawberry at the base of the Mogollon Rim. The Payson Roundup has been recognized as Newspaper of the Year 12 times by the Arizona Newspapers Association as well as being honored as the Nation’s Best Newspaper by the Inland Press Association. Brian Kramer, son of Donovan Jr., is the publisher of the White Mountain Independent and Payson Roundup. The Arizona Newspapers Association named Donovan M. a Master Editor-Publisher in 1976 and inducted him into the Arizona Newspapers Hall of Fame in 1998. Ruth Kramer is now company president, and Donovan Kramer Jr. and Kara K. Cooper are co-publishers of the company’s publications. Kara’s daughter Zoe Cooper also takes part in the day-to-day operations while a student at the University of Arizona. All of the children and grandchildren have worked at the newspapers growing up. The family remains active in ANA and National Newspaper Association, as well as other press organizations. The Central Saver, delivered on Tuesdays, provides advertisers added value by covering the market with a shopper format. This product reaches over 43,000 households in the Casa Grande Valley each week. Realtors and affiliated businesses “reach out” through the Arizona Real Estate Buyers’ Guide, which is distributed to locations in the East Valley, Tri-Valley, White Mountain and Payson communities and available online at PinalCentral.com, WMICentral.com and Payson.com each month. Pinal Ways, the company’s countywide quarterly magazine, features people, places and events – often with a historical flavor. PinalCentral.com is the market’s leader for local news and advertising. Each month it attracts 1.5 million page views and growing. TriValley Digital is the company’s online marketing division for digital presence for local, small businesses. Pinal Productions produces video for online use on PinalCentral.com and for customers needing video production for their own needs. These newspapers and other publications cover an area of more than 140 miles east to west and 50 miles from north to south; a sprawling and dynamic area that includes Pinal County – Arizona’s third most populous. This vital area, not as thoroughly covered by any other medium or combination of media, includes more than 400,000 people, engaged in such diverse occupations as farming, cattle ranching and feeding, to manufacturing, tourism and retail sales.
