The Centre for Natural Burial

A Celebration of Jim Strigle’s Life

By Charmaine Smith-Miles,  Anderson Independent Mail

A story on Mr. Strigle’s burial and the rise of “green cemeteries” is tentatively scheduled to air at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday’s edition of NBC Nightly News.

Jim Strigle was a man who struggled in his last years with a life that he thought was a failure.

He was clouded by self-doubt because he had lost two homes and a business.

But Friday his wife focused on none of that. She told the story of a man who became her best friend, a man who fought for her hand in marriage and a man who took her daughters to love as his own.

She spoke of a man who lived a “wildly successful life” because of his sincerity.

“Trust took time with him but he gave of himself easily,” Karen Strigle said. “It was easy for him to love people. It was the relationships he built. That is what made him so wonderful.”

Mr. Strigle owned Omni Office Products and worked with the Anderson Independent-Mail as a district manager and a newspaper carrier for years. He attended Harvard University and served as a promotions director for Channel 40 WAXA in Anderson.

Even though it has been three years since he bagged anyone’s groceries at Publix, customers still ask about him.

On Tuesday evening, after a battle with lung cancer, an aneurysm in his aorta and scarring in his lungs, he died at the age of 69. He was buried Thursday. And a celebration of his life is set for today at 11 a.m.

In his death he helped heal wounded relationships within his family. His decision to be buried at Ramsey Creek Preserve, a natural burial site in Westminister, has garnered the attention of NBC Nightly News as they work on a story about the trend in such funerals.

Ramsey Creek Preserve, owned by Memorial Ecosystems, became the nation’s first “green cemetery” in 1998. The preserve gives families a natural, less expensive and more intimate way to bury loved ones.

No embalming fluid is used. Natural caskets are used. Mr. Strigle’s was buried in a hand-made pine casket.

“We thought he was nuts,” one of Mr. Strigle’s daughters, Jennifer Berg, said.

The choice came from a man who was always socially conscious but never acted on it until it came time for him to die, his family said. He loved the beauty of the preserve and seemed to somehow know that his death would bring people together, Mrs. Strigle said.

And it did.

All of his family came. His son, his three daughters, his grandchildren were all there. Three of his “beloved entourage” — all staff from Hospice of the Upstate — came. Close friends were there. Two pastors and one chaplain were also there. It was a crowd of 30 who returned him to the earth and found joy in his life when the ceremony was over.

“With all the crying there was laughing in between because of all the things that he did to make us smile,” Mr. Strigle’s daughter, Julie Frick Wojcik, said.