STERLING – After 87 years, the stacks of print newspapers and ink prints on fingers soon will be no more at the Sterling-Rock Falls News Agency.

The agency delivered its last Chicago Tribunes and Chicago Sun-Times' this week after many years of supplying regional and national newspapers to local businesses and residences, and selling them from its vending machines.

Distribution of regional newspapers will continue for another couple of weeks before the agency closes for good, owner Kenny Feldman said.

Feldman, who is the station operator at the Exelon nuclear plant in Byron, is its last of three generations of owners.

KNN Newspapers of Dixon will take over distribution of the Chicago newspapers, Feldman said. Arrangements for the other newspapers are being determined.

"The constant throughout all of the years was the News Agency, and we had hundreds of people that delivered papers," he said. "We get a lot of stories from people telling us about my grandpa [the late Emil Feldman]. That business really touched a lot of people's lives. At one point, pretty much everyone in town was either a customer or had their kids working for my grandpa.

"People sometimes think the paper appears at their store magically. There was a lot of people working their butts off at 3 in the morning to do it."

It's the last of the local Feldman businesses to close.

Emil came to Sterling in 1933 after his grocery store burned in Davenport. Emil's brother-in-law operated a news agency in Rock Island and told Emil of the need for one in Sterling, said Shirley Feldman, Kenny's mother.

The first location was downtown on Light Street – the alley between Locust and First streets – before it moved into Emil's toy store on the northwest corner of West Third Street and Avenue A.

In the 1950s, the agency handled about 5,000 newspapers a day. That number whittled down to 2,000 in the 1980s, and to about 200 today, Kenny said. Most customers are seniors, and they aren't being replaced.

The agency also circulated many magazines to businesses as well.

Both the news agency and toy store later moved across Avenue A until the toy store closed in the mid-1990s; by that time, Emil had passed them on to his son, Wally.

Even after 30 years, Shirley continues to hear many stories about her family's beloved toy store, with the clown logos and its familiar blue-and-white cupola at the corner of the second building. The news agency operated at the back of that building.

"The toy store has been closed for so long, and yet I still get so many comments from people about it," Shirley said. "It was a really beloved store and I miss it myself, other than the lot of work, but I loved it."

Wally also was a lawyer and moved his office and the news agency kitty-corner from City Hall. He later retired and died in 2012. After Wally's retirement, Shirley took over bookkeeping for a time at the news agency.

Most recently, the news agency operated out of the Warehouse at 301, just two blocks west of the former toy store locations.

"Ken worked with Grandpa Emil and the people that ran it after Grandpa was gone," Shirley said. "He knew the business inside out."

"I'm sure going to miss it," Kenny said.