WFMJ reporter Skelton dies

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Dick Skelton, whose unmistakable voice resounded for WFMJ TV 21 on many of the Mahoning Valley’s biggest news stories, died Thursday.

Skelton, 65, who had been in ill health, was a longtime reporter and news anchor for the local television station.

John Grdic, general manager at WFMJ, worked with Skelton for 25 years and remembers him as a gracious man and “a real hungry reporter” who “always wanted to get to the bottom of a story — and he was good at it.”

Grdic also recalls Skelton’s strong, commanding voice.

“You knew it was Dick Skelton when you heard him,” Grdic said.

WFMJ bookkeeper Cindy Fularz remembers that voice, too.

“I could always hear him laughing,” said Fularz, who worked on the floor above Skelton. “He always had a sense of humor. You could be having a rotten day,” she said, but his laughter lifted her up.

Fularz said she never heard Skelton complain, which Grdic attributes to his “glass half-full” attitude.

Skelton worked at WFMJ for 38 years, starting in 1969 and retiring in 2007.

Mona Alexander, news director at the station, worked with Skelton for more than 10 years.

“Dick did everything,” Alexander said, describing his reporting work.

He’ll be remembered for covering the area’s monumental stories over the past 30 years, she said, from the closing of the Valley’s steel mills to James A. Traficant’s tax evasion and bribery trial in the 1980s when he was Mahoning County sheriff, to the killer tornadoes that ripped through the Mahoning and Shenango valleys in 1985.

Arrangements are pending at JosephRossi Funeral Home in Niles.