Jamestown native James Kropp dies, will be buried in Fried
James Kropp was born in Jamestown in 1967, and his final resting place will be Sacred Heart Cemetery in Fried, tying his long life back to North Dakota.
James John Kropp’s life ended in Prior Lake, Minnesota, but his story will come home to North Dakota. The 59-year-old Jamestown native, born in 1967 to Clifford and Mary Ellen Kropp, will be laid to rest at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Fried, a final link to the place that shaped him before his life stretched across college arenas, Chicago business circles and a family of six children.
Kropp died May 27, 2026, while living in Prior Lake. Visitation is scheduled for 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, at Ballard-Sunder Funeral & Cremation in Prior Lake, and Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 3, at St. Catherine Catholic Church in Prior Lake. The burial in Fried places his farewell back in North Dakota, where his roots began in Jamestown.
He left Jamestown for college in 1985 and went on to play Division I ice hockey at Rensselaer Polytechnic University in Troy, New York. At RPI, he earned an electrical engineering degree and met Kathleen Daube, whom he married in 1993. The couple later moved to Chicago and raised six children, building a family life described by relatives as centered on faith, laughter and hard work. Even as his career moved into health-care technology, that family foundation remained at the center of his life.
Kropp later earned an MBA from Wharton in 1993 and built a career as a founder and executive in the business of health technology. Business profiles identify him as the founder of xAmplifier and say he previously founded The Argo Group, Inc. in 1992, New Image Specialists, LLC in 1998 and xAmplifier in 2013. Those same profiles say he served as CEO of SignatureSpecialists in 2000. His education and career took him far from Stutsman County, but the obituary’s emphasis on his Jamestown birth and his burial in Fried underscores how closely North Dakota stayed tied to his identity.
Kropp is also remembered by his parents, two sisters, his beloved hunting partner Venator, and many other family members and friends. For Jamestown, his life is the kind that reaches beyond county lines without ever fully leaving home behind.
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