Hailed as an early influencer in the commercial rafting industry, 97-year-old Medford resident Bryce Whitmore is one of six new inductees in the International Whitewater Hall of Fame.

Added to 55 previous “leaders and legends” in the international hall, Whitmore was honored as a “whitewater pioneer” last month in Lyon, France.

An Ohio native who ventured into research chemistry before trading business attire for river shoes, Whitmore ran a rafting company for three decades that ran rivers in Northern California and Southern Oregon, including the Klamath, Trinity, Rogue and Illinois.

Born in 1926 in Wooster, Ohio, Whitmore was drafted into the Army the day he graduated high school in 1946. Two weeks later, he was on a hospital ship in the San Francisco Bay as part of a group of “Army soldiers that served on ships.”

“I was basically in the Army’s Navy. We did transport. … We would take over a load of officers’ wives to be with their husbands; then we’d bring back the wounded,” Whitmore recalled, noting that he traveled to Hawaii, Japan and Guam.

While fellow soldiers were hitting the bars during leave, Whitmore spent every free moment exploring the outdoors. When he left the military, Whitmore used his G.I. Bill to study paint chemistry at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland.

“As soon as I finished school, I kept remembering how great it was out in California, so I packed up my stuff and got in my car. … I told my mom, ‘I’m done with Ohio and snow in the wintertime.’ I remember it was a cold February,” Whitmore said.

Moving to Berkeley, Whitmore landed a job with Sears and Roebuck Paint Co. A working stiff “in a room without windows,” Whitmore didn’t last long in the 9-to-5 world. Spending his free time roller skating, ice skating, sailing and racing cars, a neighbor’s invite to go kayaking forever changed his path.

“A few people got kayaks and applied to the Sierra Club to have a river touring section. It had been going on for about a year when I discovered it. I had been doing other things, like racing. … I was looking for new fun,” Whitmore said.

While living in El Sobrante, California, Whitmore and several club members ventured to Europe and discovered a new style of kayak featuring a wood frame with canvas “skin,” an alternative to often-fragile Inuit-style kayaks made of animal skin stretched over whalebone.

Taking things a step farther, Whitmore designed a fiberglass kayak. The boat worked so well that Whitmore’s kayaking cohorts all wanted one. Whitmore and his friends also worked with a surf shop owner to devise short-sleeved wetsuit tops that were warm but buoyant. Building kayaks and spending time on the river filled much of Whitmore’s time — and his garage.

Whitmore excelled at slalom kayak competitions, placing first at the Salida, Colorado, whitewater races in 1960. He was later chosen to represent the U.S. in the 1961 World Competition in Dresden, Germany. He took first place at the National Kayak Championships on the North Fork of the Feather River a year later, but he was disqualified when judges learned he owned a rafting company, which made him a “professional.”

In 1960, Whitmore returned home from a race to find his house had burned to the ground. Only his garage, filled with kayaks, survived.

Still working as a chemist, he saw the fire as a sign.

“When my house burned down, I thought about the prospect of being a chemist for the rest of my life. I thought, ‘Well that’s no fun.’ So I quit my job and grabbed my kayak and said, ‘I’m gonna kayak all summer long.’ … I never did go back to my chemical job.”

After a summer of guiding Sierra Club river trips, Whitmore wanted to find a way to do what he loved for a living.

“In the fall, I got a hold of some rafts. There were really no rafts you could buy in those days. You had to go to war surplus or someplace like that. … I patched up some Army surplus rafts and got my business going,” he said.

A feature story in Sunset Magazine May 1964 boosted his Wilderness Water Ways business. He went from guiding “four or five people” downriver on weekends to teams of river guides offering several multiday floats per week. Helping to fine-tune the industry even more, Whitmore designed a self-baling “Huck Finn-style” rubber raft that offered improved maneuverability and safety.

“I had still been using those old surplus rafts for a few years. They were pretty terrible. … A fella back in West Virginia that owned a big rubber fabricating place, he saw a picture of me rafting on one of the rivers, on the cover of a magazine, and could see that the raft was not … all that dandy,” Whitmore said.

“He called me up and said … he would make me some rafts that would be a lot better. He made me one raft to start with … and it was fantastic. They had four tubes, side by side, and you’d sit on top of the tubes. I used those over the whole 30 years I was in business.”

A decade after quitting his chemist gig, in 1971, Whitmore relocated to Galice in Josephine County and focused his business around the Rogue and Illinois rivers.

“The Rogue River is the best river for rafting because the water level is dependable; the rapids are just right. … There really hadn’t been any raft trips on the Rogue, so that took off like crazy,” Whitmore said. Laying claim as the first company to commercially navigate the Illinois River, Whitmore said the Illinois was a fierce competitor — in terms of beauty — for the Rogue.

“The Illinois is fantastic whitewater and beautiful. It’s really so much more than the Rogue, even. You don’t think that’s possible, but it’s an amazing river, right in our backyard,” he said.

His favorite spots on the Rogue were the lodges that offered a reprieve from camping. When he moved to Southern Oregon, riverfront lodges were mostly used by fishermen during late summer and fall.

“I convinced (lodge owners), if they opened up in summertime, I’d bring them customers,” he said.

“Black Bar Lodge and Marial Lodge were just wonderful. Those were the nights where we didn’t have to cook or anything. … We would just pull in like celebrities, send people off to their cabins and have a little cocktail and a nice dinner.”

Whitmore’s daughter, Jana Johnson, who lives in Canada, remembers a childhood on the river and her dad’s sense of humor, including a bear costume he’d wear while tubing down the river or visiting campsites.

“I’d hear them at breakfast, talking about the bear,” Whitmore remembered with a laugh.

Another favorite memory for Whitmore was a black lab named Charlie Brown who enjoyed being in a kayak when it rolled.

He remembers countless evenings cooking over campfire and playing guitar. Former guides of Whitmore’s still visit — he lives at an assisted living facility in Medford — to tell stories or play guitar with their old boss.

When he retired in 1986, Whitmore left Galice and moved onto 50 acres along Anderson Creek in Talent. For several decades, he returned to sailing, collecting cars and skating. He even installed a roller-skating rink floor on the upper level of an old barn.

The best memories from his more than three decades of rafting were the relationships with customers and fellow river guides.

“My guides all stayed with me for years and years. Some of them started when they were so young that their moms had to drive them to work. … A lot of them eventually started branching off and starting their own river companies. It was really great I was able to influence their lives like that,” Whitmore said.

“I guess the other part of it was that it was just really great to get to do what I did. It was hard work, but it was so good to be outdoors all the time. To be able to show the beautiful river canyons to all those thousands of people. … It was really quite a life.”

“And to think,” he added, with his 18-year-old border collie, Raven, by his side, “I could’ve been a chemist for the rest of my life.”