CNN
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Gary Strieker had each motive to be a pessimist. People dying of starvation, brutal killings and plenty of different horrific occasions that he coated as a world reporter unfolded proper earlier than his eyes.
Yet Strieker by no means misplaced his optimistic spirit or his ardour to make clear critically necessary however typically underreported tales on the setting and international well being.
Strieker — who handed away in July of this 12 months at age 78 — was CNN’s first Nairobi bureau chief, serving to the community open its reporting hub in the Kenyan capital in 1985. Colleagues say he coated your entire African continent — typically as a one-man band — throughout the community’s early years when newsgathering budgets have been lean.
The life and profession of Gary Strieker
“He was passionate about (Africa) and he wanted to share that love of the continent with all its craziness and violence, but also its beauty and fun,” mentioned Kim Norgaard, CNN’s senior director of operations for worldwide newsgathering.
Strieker gained an Emmy award in 1992 for his function in CNN’s protection of Somalia’s civil battle and he’s credited with being one of many first tv journalists to enter Rwanda because the genocide unfolded there in the spring of 1994.
He spent the latter a part of his profession specializing in international environmental points — most lately producing “This American Land” which airs on PBS stations throughout the US.
This profession shift happened in the mid-Nineteen Nineties after an encounter with Ted Turner, CNN’s founder, who shared Strieker’s passion about conservation and the environment.
“(Gary) had this idea he wanted to be CNN’s environmental reporter,” mentioned Norgaard. “Every 12 months or so we had (a) convention in Atlanta and I walked down there with Gary and I hear Ted yell, ‘Gary! Come sit here!’ and he publicizes to everybody, ‘Gary is our guy in Africa!’
“They sat down and started talking and then Gary just mentioned this idea to him about environmental (reporting) and I remember Ted turning around, looking at Tom Johnson (CNN’s president at the time) and going, ‘Tom, this is brilliant! I love it, let’s make it happen!”
Other colleagues who recalled the story mentioned Johnson later half-jokingly swore by no means to take a seat a correspondent subsequent to Turner once more.
In 1997, Strieker and his second spouse Christine moved to Atlanta the place he labored as CNN’s international setting correspondent. His reporting on central Africa’s bushmeat disaster, in addition to deforestation in Indonesia, Peru and Papua New Guinea, earned him the National Press Club’s top prize for environmental reporting in 2000.
“Gary was, in a lot of ways, ahead of his time — he was pushing for environmental reporting years before any other network,” Norgaard recalled.
Norgaard, CNN’s former Johannesburg bureau chief, was a junior editor on the community’s worldwide desk in Atlanta when he first started working with Strieker.
“I was born and grew up in Africa, so we kind of had a special understanding,” he mentioned.
Strieker was completely different than many worldwide correspondents on the time who, Norgaard mentioned, could possibly be “really wound-up” and impolite once they referred to as the worldwide desk.
“That was never him,” Norgaard mentioned. “He was always calm, courteous … that’s what I will never forget about Gary. I didn’t know him that closely, but he’s someone you considered a friend.”
Born in the small Illinois city of Breese on July 7, 1944, Strieker grew up in San Diego, California – ultimately incomes a legislation diploma from UC-Hastings in San Francisco. Strieker and his first spouse, Phyllis, joined one of many first US Peace Corps groups in 1968 on a mission to the newly impartial African Kingdom of Swaziland – now Eswatini.
Strieker spent 5 years in Swaziland serving as a authorized advisor to the brand new sovereign authorities and serving to draft a invoice to guard Swazi land rights. During this time, his eldest daughter Lindsay was born. Strieker took a job with Citibank in Beirut in 1975 throughout the early days of the Lebanese civil battle earlier than returning to Africa as Citibank’s resident vp for its regional workplace in Nairobi, Kenya.
Strieker’s twin daughters, Rachel and Alison, have been born in Nairobi, and a few well being problems put Alison’s life in danger.
“The doctor at the hospital who was taking care of me was just very nonchalant and said, ‘Well … we’ll see if she makes it through the night,’” mentioned Alison Strieker, recalling her dad’s story. “And my dad said, ‘Is there something we can do?’ and the doctor said ‘She needs blood for a transfusion.’”
Gary Strieker mentioned he requested the nurses to check his blood kind and he was a match. Years later, Alison mentioned her dad saved her life a second time when he donated his kidney to her.
“He’s my favorite person on earth,” Alison Strieker mentioned. “I still have his kidney to this day.”
As his daughters have been rising up, they have been the middle of his life and he captured many moments of their younger lives on a film digital camera and an outdated Kodak “Brownie” digital camera.
His ardour for images sparked his pivot to journalism.
“The photography mainly got him interested in not just the images but telling a story … about people and places and animals that do not have a voice — and that seemed to be his real passion,” Alison Strieker recalled.
After a short stint with ABC News, he joined CNN in the early Nineteen Eighties, establishing the brand new community’s bureau in Nairobi and turning into its solely correspondent on the African continent on the time.
“Gary entered the world of reporting in countries in Africa at a time in the 1980s when long-running conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia coincided with drought and famine (and) led to large refugee crises,” former CNN supervising editor Eli Flournoy recalled.
“Gary was there on the ground, year after year, covering, documenting, illustrating these endemic conflicts.”
Strieker had lots of shut calls throughout his reporting profession.
“He was in crash landings in planes, he was in car accidents where other people died — he was just very dedicated,” his oldest daughter Lindsay Strieker mentioned.
After a automobile accident in Rwanda, he was declared useless and brought to the morgue.
“He woke up in the morgue as a toe tag was being attached and said it damn near killed the medical worker when he sat up,” recalled Jim Clancy, former CNN anchor and worldwide correspondent.
He had one other brush with demise whereas reporting on the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo, that left a whole bunch useless.
“Gary … fearlessly went in and covered the Ebola patients and the operations of the (Kikwit) hospital, which was one of the first of its kind to treat an infectious outbreak like Ebola,” Flournoy recalled. “It was a very, very dangerous environment.”
At one level, the native authorities started implementing a quarantine and approached Strieker, who they believed had been uncovered to Ebola.
“They were going to put him in the hospital’s Ebola wing,” Flournoy mentioned.
Equipped with a satellite tv for pc cellphone, Strieker referred to as the worldwide desk in a panic.
“He (said) ‘We have to do something to prevent this from happening, because I will almost certainly die if I’m quarantined in this hospital,’” Flournoy mentioned.
After a “mad scramble” which concerned a lot of cellphone calls and the intervention of United Nations officers, Strieker was allowed to depart the nation as a substitute.
“Gary continued to be unflappable, determined to get down to the facts of the story at the same time as being able to always find the human story within the larger conflict,” Flournoy mentioned. “He was a remarkable storyteller.”
Strieker by no means misplaced his curiosity or power for shining a lightweight on essential tales about folks who are impacted by international well being and environmental crises.
“It was never about getting his face on TV or a higher Nielsen rating,” mentioned Dave Timko who labored with Strieker on “This American Land.”
Strieker solely cared about utilizing his platforms to inform the tales of individuals the world over who have been in want.
“Sometimes he’d say, ‘If I don’t go to those places, nobody’s doing those stories,’” his widow Christine Nkini Strieker mentioned.
He was a faithful father to the couple’s two youngsters Reid, 20, and Nandi, 16, sharing tales with them at dinnertime about his adventures and spending each second he might together with his household when he wasn’t on task.
Even when he turned sick, Christine mentioned that Strieker was decided to get higher so he might begin working once more.
“He refused to say, I’m too sick to do anything,” she mentioned.
After Strieker’s passing in July, pals and former colleagues flooded a shared Facebook web page with recollections — all recounting Strieker’s unimaginable tales, his quiet bravery in the midst of extremely harmful reporting assignments, his wit and real devotion to the craft of journalism.
“His message to us was, ‘Life, with its ups and downs, is an adventure – and it’s important to stay curious and compassionate,’” mentioned his daughter Rachel.
It’s some consolation to the family members he leaves behind, together with his 5 youngsters and three surviving grandchildren, who are selecting up the items after his passing.
“The more we don’t look at the sadness and the more we look at the positive in the life he gave us – that’s the thing I want my kids to carry on,” Christine Strieker mentioned.