Sid Dorfman began a career in journalism that would span nearly eight decades — and no, that is not a typo — when a struggling newspaper called The Morning Ledger offered him 10 cents a column inch to compile high school sports results.

It was 1935. He was 15. In the years that followed, that newspaper would become the biggest in New Jersey, and no one had more to do with its growth than Dorfman, who died Saturday surrounded by his family. He was 94.

To new readers, Dorfman was most recognizable as a weekly fixture on the second page of the sports section. His final column, about Alabama football, ended with a quotation from Greek philosopher Epictetus:

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about the things which are beyond the power of our will."

But Dorfman wore many hats during a lifetime at the newspaper. He covered golf, midget bike races, boxing and even picked horse races at the local tracks under the pseudonym "The Masked Lady." His Mountainside-based Dorf Feature Service established blanket coverage of high school sports for the newspaper’s circulation area.

"He was one of the last, great newspaper people," said former governor Richard Codey, who made $22 covering township meetings for Dorfman as a student at FDU in the 1960s.

Dorfman set up a system of bureaus that put reporters closer to the suburban towns they covered, and that decision, along with his efforts to get more funeral homes to post obituaries in the newspaper, helped The Star-Ledger to eclipse the once-dominant Newark News in the circulation wars.

"Sid Dorfman was an institution all his own in New Jersey sports coverage," Gov. Chris Christie said in a statement. "All New Jersey kids growing up and a part of high school and college sports should know that he played a huge role in the joy of seeing their names and pictures in print and bringing them the attention they earned for their success in athletics."

That career started when Dorfman took the No. 14 bus to the offices of The Morning Ledger — carrying three nickels, two for the round-trip fare and one just in case — and met with then-sports editor Willie Klein. Klein asked if Dorfman, whose father came to the U.S. from the Ukraine in 1903, had any experience, and Dorfman told him he worked at the Weequahic High school paper.

"Can you type?" Klein asked.

"Yes, I can," Dorfman replied.

He got the job.

"You’re led by the hand of fate," Dorfman said in a 2005 interview to mark his 70th anniversary at the newspaper. "You can’t plan these things. Willie Klein was there that day, and if he wasn’t, I don’t know, I might have been working in a dockyard or something."

Gradually, Dorfman introduced features that are still among the most popular in the newspaper today. He started the Top 20 ranking for high school sports around the state, and All-State teams, not just for football and boys basketball, but for girls sports as well — the first newspaper in the metropolitan area to do so.

"Sid was an amazing journalist with a profound love of sports and a passion for good stories," said Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications, which has owned the newspaper since 1935. "And Sid was incredibly loyal to his colleagues, his family and our family."

The Star-Ledger still trailed The Newark Evening News in circulation when Mort Pye, the newspaper’s longtime editor, approached Dorfman in the early ’60s with a problem: How could the newspaper break the stranglehold the News had on the obituary listings in the area?

Pye had brought in several experts to take on the job, but they failed. Dorfman relied on his knowledge of the state, and slowly, with one funeral director at a time, brought the newspaper some much-needed business.

"I knew them all from sports. I might have put them on an All-County team," Dorfman said in 2005. "They were easy to get. Now, we’re probably tops in the country for volume. People want their obits — and we give them their obits. It made a major contribution to the well-being of the paper."

In August 1972, the Newark News ceased publication. The Star-Ledger, the underdog for most of its existence, had won the circulation war, thanks in large part to Sid Dorfman.

But his true passion was sports. Dorfman, a longtime member at Maplewood Country Club, covered some of the greatest in golf history, from Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus. Dorfman, a 2004 inductee into the MetroWest Jewish Hall of Fame, would use the pseudonym Paul Ryan when he covered golf because an editor was convinced the country clubs would not allow a Jewish writer onto their courses.

His alumni from Dorf Feature Service includes several writers who went on to become columnists and sports editors at major newspapers. Jerry Izenberg was working at the New York Herald Tribune when Dorfman called to talk him into taking the open sports columnist job at The Star-Ledger. It was 1962, and Izenberg continues to write for the newspaper to this day.

"He was my first boss," Izenberg said. "When I was in Fort Dix and was about to go to Korea, he hired me every weekend. He didn’t need me, but he knew I needed the money. That’s Sid."

Dorfman, who was inducted into the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, also had an impact on the athletes he covered. Len Coleman, a Montclair native, was given a 1966 All-State trophy by Dorfman and later became president of the National League and a senior adviser to Major League Baseball. The two men became friends.

"Sid is like the New York Yankees — a man of many championship seasons," Coleman said in 2005. "The Star-Ledger is on the masthead. When he writes, you’d sell just as many newspapers if Sid Dorfman was on the masthead. He’s been a bridge from the 20th Century into the 21st Century, not just for sports, but for the state."

Surviving are his wife, Marianne; his daughter, Rhoda; his son, Gary, and his wife, Marianne Dorfman; his grandson, Scott, and his wife, Elana Dorfman; and grandchildren, Jessica and Lael Dorfman. Sid was also predeceased by his loving grandson, Jason.

Services will be held Tuesday at 1 p.m. at Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael, 60 Temple Drive, Springfield. Arrangements are by Bernheim Apter Kreitzman Funeral Chapel, Livingston.