{"id":92439,"date":"2024-11-07T05:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uswps06.newsmemory.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/2024\/11\/07\/james-soft\/?destination=northern-plains-independent"},"modified":"2024-11-07T05:03:59","modified_gmt":"2027-09-23T05:03:59","slug":"james-soft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/2024\/11\/07\/james-soft\/?destination=northern-plains-independent","title":{"rendered":"James Soft"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> James C. \u201dJim\u201d Soft, 78, of Billings died Oct. 29, 2024.<br \/>\n\t  He was born July 24, 1946, in Williston, N.D., to Bernard and Clara (Graber) Soft. He was the youngest of three brothers and grew up in Richey.<br \/>\n\t  He was incredibly athletic and excelled in basketball, football and track and field in high school. In January 2005, he was inducted into the 10th annual Montana High School Association Athletic Hall of Fame. He was a rebounding machine, averaging 20 rebounds  per game during high school. His basketball talent earned him one of the first full-ride basketball scholarships  offered at Eastern Montana College. His collegiate  career was a prestigious one, an All-American twice (1966 and 1967) and All-Frontier  Conference three times and was named MVP of the league in 1968. While at EMC, he set season and career rebounding  records and currently  is the Yellowjackets\u2019 third all-time leading scorer. In 1994, he was inducted into the Eastern Montana College Athletic Hall of Fame and Distinction and his #50 jersey  was retired.<br \/>\n\t  He earned a bachelor\u2019s degree  in 1968 from EMC. He holds a certified financial planner designation and a master of science degree. He also has a master of arts from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a four-time published author. After college, he went to play for Athletes in Action, a division of Campus Crusade  for Christ.<br \/>\n\t  On Aug. 23, 1968, he married  Linda Jo Schneider at the Evangelical United Brethren  Church in Billings. They resided in Billings with their two children, Max and Brook.<br \/>\n\t  His life work was dedicated  to the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch. He began <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"news-destination":[14],"news-source":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92574,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92439\/revisions\/92574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92439"},{"taxonomy":"news-destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-destination?post=92439"},{"taxonomy":"news-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-source?post=92439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}