Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Bert Case, whose booming voice and aggressive reporting defined television news in Mississippi from its infancy until last year, has died.

WAPT-TV assistant news director Aaron Vogel said Case died Thursday afternoon at the G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery VA Medical Center in Jackson, surrounded by family and friends. He was 76 and would have celebrated his 77th birthday Saturday.

Case had been hospitalized since Sept. 1 after a diagnosis of sepsis, a complication from an infection. His condition had improved last year, but his wife, Mary Weiden, said it began to get worse again this month.

A Jackson native, Case joined the campus radio at the University of Mississippi in 1957 and took a job at Memphis radio station WMPS in 1960. Colleagues say that's where Case developed his distinctive intonation, including the "Berrrrrt Case" signoff that ended his reports.

After serving as an Air Force information officer, he returned to Jackson in 1965, joining WJTV-TV, serving as news director and anchor. In 1970, he jumped to WAPT, launching newscasts at the station as its news director. Then in 1974, he moved to WLBT-TV, the longtime ratings leader in the Jackson news market, serving as a reporter, anchor and news director.

WLBT asked Case to retire in 2014, setting off a round of honors, but he was barely gone a couple of weeks before resurfacing as a reporter at WAPT, still covering tornadoes and buttonholing politicians, sometimes outhustling competitors young enough to be his grandchildren.

"He had a nose for news and he wasn't afraid to get out there and get the story," said retired WLBT-TV news director Dennis Smith. "He just could not stand not working in broadcast news, covering some story. He was just a news hound."

He cemented his place in Mississippi journalism history in 1999 when he and a cameraman drove up to Gov. Kirk Fordice, who had moved out of the Governor's Mansion into a suburban Madison home. He asked about Fordice's trip to Paris with not his wife Pat Fordice, but a former girlfriend of his youth, Ann Garber Creson.

Fordice, characteristically confrontational, told Case that if the reporter returned after he was no longer governor, "I'll whip your a--."

Later that month, Fordice announced he was divorcing to marry Creson.

"I'm very sorry I never got to reconcile our differences," Case told The Clarion-Ledger when Fordice died in 2004. "I don't think he should be remembered for that incident."

Other politicians saluted him Thursday, including U.S. Sen Thad Cochran, who was a fraternity brother at Ole Miss.

"Like he did for many Mississippians, he became a fixture in my life," Cochran said in a statement. "With insight and thoroughness, he brought us news of the good, the bad and the humorous with unwavering fairness."

The newsman also achieved Internet fame — a 2010 video of Case swatting at an aggressive dog with a reporter's notebook and shouting "You get away from here!" has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube.

Some legends about Case aren't true, though, like the claim that he tied himself to a tree to witness Hurricane Camille as it slammed into Mississippi's Gulf Coast in 1969.

"I did not strap myself to a tree, but I did think about it," Case told the Daily Mississippian in 2005. "My cameraman, Bob Bullock, said, 'Bert, you'd drown.' He was probably right. But after Camille, I was glad to see that the tree I had wanted to strap myself to was still standing."

Case was deeply affected by Camille, with co-workers saying he always pushed for heavy coverage of natural disasters. Case and Gov. Haley Barbour cried in 2005 while flying over the Mississippi coast after Hurricane Katrina, and the 10th anniversary of that storm was one of the last stories Case covered in 2015.