Jim Price, founder of broadcast engineering firm Sterling Communications in Ringgold, Ga., has died.
His son James E. Price III told clients and friends in an e-mail that his father “was walking to his station, WBFC(LP), on a nice wooded trail on his property between his house and the studio and he had a heart attack and was dead instantly.” His father had suffered a stroke a few years earlier, he wrote.
According to the company’s website, Price was an FCC first-class licensed broadcast engineer who began his career in broadcasting as a teenager. He helped found Sterling Communications in 1979 as vice president.
Sterling Communications is active in Christian broadcasting and runs the website Christianradiohome.com, which tells visitors that a broadcast station “is one of the finest communications tools God has ever given to us.”
“Many of you loved my Dad,” Jim Price III wrote to clients. “Many of you are ‘on the air’ with a radio or TV station because of the burden God placed in your heart, and the assistance you received from my Dad, long before I came on board. … Walking the National Religious Broadcasters convention floor every year with my Dad was always an honor because of the heartfelt thanks he always received from so many of you.”
His son went on to describe Price as “clearly an obsessive engineer who needed me as an ambassador to the public as he studied, tweaked, checked for waivers, planned directional antennas, talked with commission staff and generally obsessed over the work he did for you, but wasn’t real great at explaining the ‘why’s and how’s’ of the project when completed. As I worked for Dad longer and met many of his old cronies/friends/clients I began to see that Sterling is really just a cog in the gear that does a work for God.”
Funeral services are being held today. A funeral guest book is here.
