When the young 5-foot-9 blonde attended her first print shop expo as owner of Centralia’s Gorham Printing, people asked if she was somebody’s daughter. That’s because Catherine (Croteau-Kiggins) Carlson is a true minority in the male-dominated business — a 31-year-old woman who is half Native American.
A go-getter from an early age, Carlson purchased Gorham Printing from its founder, Kurt Gorham, on June 16, 2023, but she had been running the book design and printing company for several years. She started working for Gorham as a pre-press technician at the age of 21 and changed jobs within the company nearly every year, working her way up to manager.
Gorham was 21 when he and his wife, Norma, opened a commercial graphics and print shop in downtown Centralia in 1976. Fifteen years later, they moved to rural Rochester and switched to printing only books in a building on their property.
“Book printing was an intriguing new venture, and I decided to jump into this arena of printing with both feet,” he said. “With the purchase of bindery equipment, additional presses, we turned our attention to printing books and only books.”
The company printed small runs of 25 up to several thousand soft-cover or hardbound books in color or black and white, filling a niche for personal and family historians like me.
“This change of direction in our printing company from commercial printing to a book design and printing company was quite rewarding for me,” he said. “I loved the actual production process, and because of the internet, we had a viable way to work with customers from around the country. I felt we had found our niche!”
As the stigma against self-publishing faded, Gorham’s business boomed.
In November 2006, the company moved to a new 7,500-square-foot building on Mahoney Drive at the Port of Centralia. It employs eight people who can help design text and covers in addition to printing and binding the books. Gorham ships throughout the country.
“I truly enjoyed the challenges of running the business, working with wonderful and dedicated employees, and seeing the smiles and compliments from our customers,” Gorham said.
But after more than four decades in the business, the need to keep current with trends and develop faster and better methods began to lose its luster, he said, realizing it was probably time to retire. He knew Carlson wanted to own a business, so he said, “transitioning the business to her made perfect sense.” As he mentored her, she made decisions, ran the daily operations, and worked with suppliers, vendors and book clients.
When he retired in mid-2023, Gorham said, “it was a great decision for both of us.”
“She is very capable, and I feel confident she will continue to grow the business with new vitality,” he said.
“I was already doing it, so the transition was extremely smooth,” Carlson said.
To buy the company, Carlson, who was still Kiggins then, applied for a loan.
“They definitely don’t make it easy,” she said. “It took eight months for me to actually be able to make the next step happen after two years of working toward it with Kurt.”
Although she preferred not to say what she paid for the business, the property alone on 1.34 acres is valued at $880,000, according to the Lewis County Assessor’s Office.
So, who is this young woman who purchased a print company at the age of 30?
Catherine Croteau-Kiggins was born to a 16-year-old mother, the result of a high school fling that didn’t last. Her biological father is a full-blooded member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin. She grew up in Estacada, Oregon, and bonded especially with her grandparents.
As a child, she loved spending time in her grandfather’s mechanic shop. Her grandmother did foster care, and her mother rented a chair in a hair salon.
“I loved how he was running the business,” Carlson said. “So I spent a lot of time as a kid watching adults own their companies. And I was like, that’s what I want to do one day.”
Her mother later married, had three more children, and moved the family to Longview when Catherine was 10.
“I’m from a very small town,” she said. “Going to such a big town was really hard for me as a young kid, so my mom homeschooled me.”
She attended a private Seventh-day Adventist school for a while and then enrolled in Lower Columbia College’s Running Start program. In 2011, at 18, she graduated with her high school diploma and an associate degree in business plus five one-year certificates in business, accounting, customer service, marketing and project management.
“I just loved it,” Carlson said. “It was the first time in my education I really felt challenged.”
She worked from a young age, starting at Cup of Joe’s coffee shop when she was 13 and later at a pastry shop and café, Cassava. She wanted to own a bakery someday and signed up for an apprenticeship in Bandon, Oregon, but decided to stay closer to home when her grandmother, who was a lot like her mother, was diagnosed with cancer. The death of her beloved grandmother five days before her 18th birthday was “a life changer for me.”
She’s still close to her grandfather who lives in Raymond. “He is very proud of where I’m at in life,” she said.
After graduating, she worked for a time as a radiology assistant but didn’t like the medical field, which she described as “rigid.”
“You’re told to be in this box and stay in this box,” she said, “and I struggled with that a bit.”
Then she worked as a pharmacy technician but finally saw an advertisement on Craigslist for a pre-press tech paying $10 an hour. She applied and landed the job. She began working at Gorham in January 2014, and a decade later she owns the company. To avoid being stuck in a box, she moved around to other jobs within the company — prepress, printing, customer service and cutting.
Last year proved an eventful one for Carlson as she purchased a business and married her partner of 12 years, Micah Carlson, who was homeschooled in Grand Mound and graduated in 2008 from Centralia College through Running Start. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting, drives a log truck and worked as a job superintendent.
They met at a railroad trestle near Adna on the Willapa Trail and decided to marry in the same place. She didn’t want a big wedding, so they didn’t tell anyone. They married on April 1, 2023, in front of only the pastor, his wife, a photographer and a friend who helped her into her dress.
“We finally had to just make it official,” she said. “But we had made the commitment to each other.”
She described Gorham as a good boss.
“We got along very well, and I also drove him absolutely crazy,” she said with a laugh. “Kurt would complain to me all the time. He’s like, ‘Stop doing this. You’re acting like me.’”
They both can be a bit intense, she said.
During the past decade, while the number of employees has stayed consistent, the company has increased its accuracy to 98 percent. It revamped the file upload tool and proof forms.
“We can actually still focus on the most important things of relationships and growth and craftsmanship,” she said. “That’s what we love to do.”
In the past, the company printed about 2,000 books each week, but today that number is 5,000. The company used to average 30 to 50 print jobs at a time, while today that number ranges from 80 to 200 jobs.
Although most of their customers are outside the local area, they like to keep that personal touch. They ask customers who call for their name, not their order number. The company doesn’t offer discounts because it works close to costs, and the price of materials has soared in recent years. “The cost of paper alone went up 40 percent,” Carlson said.
In their retirement, the Gorhams split their time between Sequim and Arizona. Norma still works part time as an educator, and Kurt enjoys running a portable sawmill to produce timber for his projects. Although they have two grown children, their offspring didn’t pursue careers in the printing industry.
“He didn’t want to see it sold off to someone who’s going to try to use it to get a paycheck and treat it like it’s not important,” Carlson said. “He built this company so he could have a career that was close to home, supporting his family, and was actually a part of the community. And that was my dream.”
The company has all new Canon printers. It now does foil stamping for book covers in Centralia. And Carlson plans to expand into creating hardcover books in-house rather than contracting with companies in Silverton, Oregon, or Portland.
Beyond that, she intends to continue the company’s focus on personalized customer service.
As the new owner, did she consider changing the company name?
“I never thought about changing the name,” Carlson said. “I appreciate history and heritage. Gorham Printing represents building relationships, continuous learning, and craftsmanship. Kurt told me I should change the name if I wanted to, but I am proud to keep the name Gorham Printing.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
