Dignity Memorial
A decorated broadcast journalist who earned the moniker “Top Gun” for reporting from a helicopter while covering floods died at his Georgia home earlier this week.
Jim Strickland, who retired in 2019, passed away at his suburban Atlanta home on Monday.
No cause of death was given but a former colleague wrote on social media that he had been battling cancer.
He was 65.
Strickland was a consumer investigative reporter for WSB-TV in Atlanta, where his work helped uncover scams and led to criminal indictments against illegally run businesses.
Prior to joining WSB-TV in 1999, Strickland spent 15 years as a reporter for WHO-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was nicknamed “Top Gun” for his airborne coverage of devastating floods in 1993.
Keith Murphy, who worked with Strickland at WHO-TV, eulogized his former colleague on Facebook.
“Jim died Monday night following a cancer fight. He was just 65, gone too soon,” Murphy wrote on his Facebook page on New Year’s Eve.
Murphy recalled Strickland’s groundbreaking “Dirty Dining” series, which led to reforms that overhauled the restaurant scoring inspection system in Iowa.
“Everyone who knew Jim has a Stricky story,” wrote Murphy. He added that Strickland “could be loud and gruff one minute, soft and thoughtful the next.”
“You always knew he cared. Always. Just an unforgettable guy.”
Strickland is survived by his wife, Marie, their son, Andrew, their daughter, Leah, and Leah’s fiancé, Edson Spadoni.
He also leaves behind his sister Dee, brothers Robert, Billy and Brian, and sister-in-law Ellen Warecki.
A funeral mass is scheduled to be held on Monday morning at Saint Clare of Assisi Catholic Church in Acworth, Ga. The service will be livestreamed on the church’s YouTube page.