Jim Ruddle may have vanished from local TV screens 40 years ago — leaving town to travel the world in a 35-foot custom-built steel-hulled cutter — but news of his death brought forth a stream of memories and praise from his former colleagues and even ratings rivals.
Ruddle died Thursday in Rye, New York, of natural causes at age 94. His death was announced by family members on social media.
“Jim Ruddle was old school, and that’s a good thing,” said Bill Kurtis, the former anchorman at WBBM-Ch. 2. “He was an anchorman who valued fairness and clarity. Be first, but be accurate. His talent was writing, and that was a skill that stood out in the early days of television news, writing that left its mark among names like Kalber, Drury, Chancellor, Cronkite, Calloway. It’s good company. … It was old school.”
Carol Marin, with whom Ruddle worked with for many years at WMAQ-Ch. 5, said, “Jim had a photographic memory, an IQ in the stratosphere and a journalism résumé that spanned PBS, WGN, WMAQ and the NBC network. He was old school. … And that, he would tell you, is the highest of compliments.”
“Old school” it is, then.
James F. Ruddle was born on May 20, 1932, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the youngest of three children of George and Lucille (Baxter) Ruddle. After graduating from high school, where one of his teachers had been a mentor to radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, he went on to the University of Tulsa.
He enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1951. During his three-year term, he served as a radio operator in the North Atlantic and the Pacific.
As a teen, he had worked broadcasting baseball games and handling other topics and chores for a small radio station, and after his Coast Guard stint, he joined a Tulsa TV station in 1954. He later worked toward a graduate degree from the University of New Mexico while following a broadcasting route that took him to, among many places, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tampa, Florida, (where he also taught for a time at the University of South Florida) and Mexico City, Mexico.
He came to Chicago in 1965, teaming with a newsman named Gary Park on WGN-Ch. 9’s news shows and becoming the first of what is now the standard two-person anchor teams.
He moved to WMAQ-Ch. 5 in 1967 and distinguished himself as reporter and anchorman on afternoon shifts. In 1975, he took the surprising step into public broadcasting, becoming the news anchor at WTTW-Ch. 11’s ”Public News Center.” Two years later, he became a regional correspondent for NBC. His duties, he would later say, involved being available “24 hours a day, seven days a week, whenever they wanted to use me. … I saw a lot of blizzards.”
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Married to Anne, who shunned the spotlight, their four children were Emily, Blake, Brey and Kristen.
Ruddle moved back to WMAQ in 1977. Many considered him heir apparent to the popular Floyd Kalber, but instead he did a bit of anchoring and investigative reporting and proved a powerful commentator.
In the TV tradition of his station’s Len O’Connor and Walter Jacobson, then at WBBM-Ch. 2, he was hard-hitting and provocative, sometimes to the irritation of his corporate bosses. Media columnist Rob Feder called him an anchorman and commentator of “exceptional intellect and gravitas.”
But he bridled at office politics and restrictions, and when his contract ended in 1986, Ruddle did not sign a new one, telling Feder, “I’m not trying to find work here, there or anywhere.” He had decided instead to live full time on his boat. As his wife remained in Chicago and their children pursued their adult lives, he began his sailing life on the boat named Zarzuela, Spanish for a form of lively musical theater.
He sailed the Atlantic, the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. He kept in touch with some Chicago pals, his children and their families. His wife, Anne, died in 2018, and he formed a long relationship with companion and magazine editor Marilyn Balamaci.
He eventually settled in Rye, where he wrote a charming young adult novel, “My Name Is Luke,” an adventure story set in 1850s New England about a savvy 15-year-old boy who gets trapped by two seafaring bad guys. He said he was inspired to write it by his growing brood of grandchildren.
In the wake of his death, daughter Brey Sloan, writing on Facebook, called her father “an exceptional man who led an amazing life. … Trusted newsman, marvelous conversationalist, sailor, adventurer, protector, epic storyteller, loving PawPaw, the man with a beautiful baritone voice.”
He did not miss the broadcast business. He felt that he had been lucky, he told a reporter, “to have been there at the beginning and for the best years of television journalism, and comfortable in knowing that I’m out of it now. It ain’t the same.”
His former WMAQ colleague and friend Peter Nolan, former newsman and author of the 2012 book “Campaign!: The 1983 Election that Rocked Chicago,” said that, “Jim was the brightest person I ever met in broadcasting. When I worked at WMAQ as a writer, Jim co-anchored the early news with John Palmer and the legendary Floyd Kalber soloed the 10 o’clock show. In those days, we used an old-style teleprompter which stood beside the camera. Kalber was very good at using it. But Jim, who had a photographic memory, could study the script for 10 minutes and then read the entire thing on air from memory. Floyd once told me that Ruddle had the best damn voice on the entire NBC network.
“He also had a fantastic sense of humor. One of my favorite memories is singing old songs with him in some neighborhood tavern.”
Along with his children, Ruddle is survived by six grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, as well as Balamaci.
A memorial service is being planned.
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