FARGO — Jerry Richardson was known to family and friends for his calm, quiet demeanor, until he went to work on his printing press.
“Nothing made him happier than when he’d go downstairs and start setting type. He would start humming and singing,” says his wife, Lou. "That really was his love."
For decades, Jerry ran two letterpresses out of their south Fargo home, where he was sought out for printing and designing books, broadsides, wedding invitations and anything that had to do with the written word.
Gerald Alan "Jerry" Richardson died at home on July 27 under hospice care at 91, following a period of dementia.
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The three-story Richardson house came to be known as the Ree Heights Institute for Regional and Cultural Enrichment, a nod to the small South Dakota town where he bought his first press in the mid-1960s. The finished attic was a space to develop ideas. A second-floor bedroom held the computer where offset works were laid out. The main floor living room served as a meeting space for visiting artists, including famous Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
Jerry’s encounters with celebrities, like being a child bike messenger delivering a telegram to Fred MacMurray when the actor was bird hunting in Huron, South Dakota, were among his favorite stories to tell. He would put them to paper in his collection of acquired anecdotes, “Not Bad Chicken,” which he printed himself.
Soft-spoken Jerry Richardson is remembered for his passion for printing. Photo by Leo Kim / Special to The Forum
His love of printing was founded at South Dakota State University in Brookings where he studied journalism. That was also where he met Lou, who he married the morning after graduation in 1953.
A stint in the U.S. Army in Korea and working as a public relations officer also served up material for tales.
He returned to Lou in Brookings and started a family of five children, Stacy, Gordon, Beth, Jay and Drew.
The family moved to Fargo in 1963 when Jerry started at the North Dakota State University News Bureau, becoming the director of communications in 1971.
Following retirement in 1993, he focused on his own work with his letterpresses. One of the first projects that year was teaming up with writer Jerry Lamb to print his essay, “The Book,” as a broadside. Five years later they would partner again for an appreciation of artist Ben Shahn, printed as a booklet.
Collaborating with others was one of Jerry’s biggest thrills, she says, and one of his greatest joys was printing Mark Vinz’s poem, “Heartland,” in 2008. That broadside featured an illustration by Carl Oltvedt and the three worked with artist John Volk on the printing.
Fifteen years ago, Kent Kapplinger, then a printmaking teacher at NDSU, bought a letterpress for the school’s studio and Jerry helped him get the hang of it.
“He was in the zone. It was his way of meditating,” Kapplinger says about watching Jerry work, adding that he also heard him hum and sing at the press.
A few years later, after Jerry finally printed “Not Bad Chicken” in 2014, he agreed to donate his presses and gear to NDSU. After moving the equipment to NDSU’s printing studios, Jerry would stop by on occasion to watch Kapplinger give workshops on the machines.
“You could see he was happy being around it again and seeing it being used,” says Amanda Heidt, NDSU printmaking artist researcher and studio coordinator. “What he did for the local printing community is irreplaceable.”
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