Even in death, the former newspaper editor managed a parting political lesson.

A postscript to the many insights he’d given his now grieving son.

Dad’s presidential candidate won.

“He knew his vote would cancel mine out,” said Mark P. Jones, an assistant city attorney with Kansas City.

Perrin Jones was a small-town newspaper man in the vein of William Allen White — savvy, influential and politically connected.

He died at 80 last Friday, at home in Arkansas. Sick with respiratory problems in his final weeks, the aging editor and publisher had worried about whether he would be able to cast his vote.

The family arranged for an absentee ballot, which he carefully filled out.

The next day, his wife told him that he didn’t have to worry anymore. His vote was in. He died 10 minutes later.

“It didn’t surprise me to hear that he’d taken his last breath knowing that he’d gotten his last vote in,” the younger Jones said.

The family owned The Daily Citizen in Searcy, Ark., for three generations. Perrin Jones was editor from 1954 until 1986, even after the family sold the paper in 1977. He continued writing a column until September. He once told a reporter that he’d never bought any printing equipment that he couldn’t run himself, just in case he needed to pitch in to ensure the newspaper printed daily.

As a child, his only son learned much by being “the flower on the wall.” He remembers election nights at the county courthouse, watching the ballot boxes being brought in, the results being counted and new totals being posted on a giant blackboard.

He listened when politicians came to visit in the family home. They’d pitch their cases, attempting to garner a positive editorial. One day, a very young Bill Clinton came by.

In January, as his father neared his 80th birthday, his son sensed it might be his father’s last. So he and an aunt began soliciting letters from politicians his father’s life had touched.

On his birthday, the elder Jones was presented with the stack of letters and notes. The one from Clinton read: “Perrin, can you believe we’ve gotten to be this old?”

After the newspaper was sold, Jones worked as an investigator for the consumer protection division in the Arkansas attorney general’s office. He was an expert on the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which he had been instrumental in passing. In a way, it allowed him to stay connected to his two loves, the press and politics.

On Tuesday, his son drove from Little Rock back to Kansas City, determined to cast his own ballot. His father, who never missed an election, would have been pleased.