During his life, 2009 Corwin Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Tony Bacon wore many hats.
Born Forsyth Bacon Jr. on March 31, 1929, Tony was a journalist, a prolific fundraiser, a community leader and most importantly, a devoted husband, father and grandfather.
At the end, Tony also was a fighter who battled leukemia for two years before his passing last September.
Tony lived in Vancouver his entire life, graduating from Vancouver High School in 1946. Later, at Clark College, Tony first honed his skills as a journalist at the school’s newspaper, The Penguin’s Progress, as a writer and feature editor.
In 1966, Tony opened his own public relations office in Vancouver, helping raise money for St. Joseph’s Community Hospital, later to become Southwest Washington Medical Center. During this time, he met and later married Nancy Boisvert.
“We were married for 40 years, and I can tell you that Vancouver was very important to Tony,” Nancy said this week. “He wanted to build a better community. And he did it.”
On Thursday, Nancy was on hand at a ceremony held at the Red Lion at the Quay in downtown Vancouver to honor Tony’s life and accomplishments. Last year’s Corwin honoree, Ron Frederiksen of RSV Construction along with Courtney Corwin Barker, presented the award to the extended Bacon family.
“Tony Bacon is exactly the kind of person the Corwin Lifetime Achievement Award was created to recognize,” said Vancouver Business Journal publisher John McDonagh. “Tony’s legacy of contributions to this community will be appropriately memorialized with this award and adds depth to the standard to which others should aspire.”
The Corwin award was established in 2007 in honor of Kyle Corwin, who owned Vancouver-based Corwin Beverage and made the company one of the top Pepsi bottlers and distributors before he died in 2006.
The Bacon family continues to publish The Daily Insider, an electronic newsletter, covering business, politics and people in Southwest Washington.
