Joyce Jorgensen, a crusading small-town newspaper editor in Ouray, died March 20. She was 79.
Jorgensen, who won several statewide awards while running the Ouray County Plaindealer, made friends and enemies with her stands against cloud seeding, strip mining and one proposed dam.
“She put out the best small-town newspaper I’ve ever seen,” said former Ouray Mayor Bill Fries.
“She was a fair, honest reporter. We all depended on that little paper. She traipsed all over the county getting news,” Fries said.
Jorgensen, who retired in 1990, was named Woman of the Year by the Ouray County Chamber of Commerce in 1974 and won four Sweepstakes awards for community service from the Colorado Press Association.
Known as a hard worker, Jorgensen had to do almost everything on the newspaper – selling ads, taking photos, covering events, writing, editorializing and doing the layout.
“She didn’t get a whole lot of sleep,” said her son Brian Johnson of Las Vegas. But, he added, she always believed, “If you have a brain, use it.”
Jorgensen fought cloud seeding because it produced too much snow and increased snow removal costs and avalanche danger, said her son Richard Jorgensen, also of Las Vegas.
She opposed the Ridgway dam because it would have buried the town of Ridgway, and was against a coal mining plant she felt would damage the local ecology. She was on the winning side in all three battles.
She pushed for the successful reconstruction of the flumes in Ouray and was on the committee to restore the original city hall facade.
She helped create the Ouray County Historical Society and re-established the Ridgway Sun, a newspaper that had been closed since the 1920s.
Joyce Andersen was born Feb. 26, 1928, and was reared on a farm near Newell, Iowa.
She had an early interest in art, and after high school studied painting and sculpture in New York City.
Over the years, Jorgensen worked as a fashion coordinator, a secretary, a fashion model, a nightclub singer, a court reporter, a personnel manager and a window trimmer.
She married John Jorgensen in 1949 and worked with him on newspapers in Nebraska and at the Ouray County Herald. He died in 1958. She operated the Little Studio Art Gallery, the first art gallery in Ouray, her family said, and later owned the Jorgensen Studio and Gallery J.
She taught art in public schools and was on the Colorado Council of Arts and Humanities.
In 1965 she married L.A. (Johnny) Johnson. They divorced in 1968.
Jorgensen became managing editor of the Ouray paper, which was renamed the Plaindealer.
In addition to her sons, she is survived by a daughter, Kirsten Jorgen sen of Craig.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
