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Pulitzer-winning reporter Jim Sheeler dead at 53

NEW YORK (AP) — Jim Sheeler, a former Rocky Mountain News journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his extensive and compassionate reporting on the families of Colorado soldiers killed in the Iraq War and the man tasked with notifying them, has died. Sheeler, who was also an author, was 53.

Sheeler died last week at his home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, according to Case Western Reserve University, where he taught journalism and media writing. The cause of death was not immediately determined, the school said Wednesday. Sheeler's 12,000-word “Final Salute” won the feature writing Pulitzer in 2006 and was expanded into a book of the same name that received a National Book Award nomination two years later.

In 2016, Sheeler won Case Western's Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Sheeler was a Houston native who majored in journalism at the University of Colorado and started out at the Boulder Daily Camera. He wrote for the Boulder Planet weekly paper and the Denver Post before joining the Rocky Mountain News in 2004. Early in his career, he often worked on obituaries and would cite his experiences as a guide when he began writing about the war, which began in 2003, and its impact in the U.S. For a year, he followed U.S. Marine Major Steve Beck, whose job was to inform families of the deaths of soldiers stationed overseas.

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Pulitzer judges praised his “poignant story on a Marine major who helps the families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss and honor their sacrifice.”

Sheeler's books also included “Obit: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Led Extraordinary Lives” and he contributed to an obituary writing guide, “Life On the Death Beat.”

He is survived by his wife, Annick and their son, James.