Jim Ruddle, a longtime Chicago broadcast journalist who later left the business to take to the water, died Thursday.
Ruddle’s daughter, Brey Sloan, announced on Facebook that her father had died Thursday morning. He was 94.
Ruddle grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He wrote on the Tulsa TV Memories website that he got into broadcasting while attending Tulsa Central High School under the tutelage of teacher Isabelle Ronan, who also served as a mentor to radio legend Paul Harvey.
Ruddle wrote that he appeared on television for the first time as part of the cast of a musical comedy show at the University of Tulsa, which was broadcast on CBS-affiliated local TV station KOTV in 1949…