Posted on 11/06/2011 8:11:20 AM PST by Kaslin
Sorry to hear Andy Rooney passed away. Barely a month past his resignation from 60 Minutes.
He was 92.
One of the reasons I am involved with building the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans is because of people like Andy Rooney. His generation isn’t getting any younger. The museum should have been built in the 1960's, when memories were fresher. But, Rooney’s generation came home from the war and went to work. They raised families and built businesses.
Few talked about their wartime experiences. They wanted to shield their kids from the pain. I haven’t ever talked with a person that was in battle that actually beats their chest and yells, “Look what I did”. Most of the ones that do weren’t ever under fire-at least according to my friends and acquaintances that were.
Today, we have a thing called Honor Flight. I think it’s great. They fly WW2 vets out to a memorial in Washington DC. My only regret is that I wish they would fly those same guys to New Orleans to visit the museum. Then we could get an oral history from them-something on tape to save for the generations to come. Something historians one hundred years from now could have access to.
Rooney and I differed politically. But, his accounts of World War Two resonate to this day and I believe his experiences are what caused him to be so antiwar in the later stages of his life. War is such a waste of resources.
But, sometimes they do have to be fought when left with no other practical choice. World War Two was one of those wars. It was truly a choice between freedom and totalitarianism. Human decency and dignity vs Destruction of humanity.
I hope that someday you make a trip to New Orleans to see the museum and learn about the war, and what can be done to stop future wars from being fought. Plus, I’d be happy if you sent a check to the museum and made a small donation. Every little bit helps, even twenty bucks.
Here is a little of what Andy Rooney witnessed and wrote after the war. It came from an article by Bethanne Kelly Patrick Military.com Columnist
Andrew A. Rooney set out from his hometown in the Albany, N.Y., area to nearby Colgate College, ready to play football and have a good time — until fate, in the form of World War II, intervened.
Rooney was drafted and sent to basic training at Fort Bragg, N.C. His most memorable achievement there, he noted, was managing to heist a chunk of ice back to the barracks on a hot night so that he and his cohorts could enjoy canteens full of cold water.
The unit soon had a cold shower of reality when they were shipped out to Europe. Because Rooney had a smidgen of education and a very brief amount of Army writing experience, he was assigned to “detached service” with the newly created Stars and Stripes newspaper. Housed in the vacated Times of London offices (that venerable journal had moved underground), the busy military newsroom covered events as diverse as VIP visits, unit softball games, and — oh, yes, combat. Rooney was detailed to the 8th Air Force and spent so much time observing its preparations, maneuvers, and landings that he co-authored his first bestseller, “Air Gunner,” during that time.
It was while Rooney was attached to the 8th that he witnessed a death terrible in its inevitability. A call came in that one bomber’s ball turret gunner was trapped. Operating in the bomber’s belly, ball turret gunners rotated their plastic “cages” for maximum target capability. On this particular aircraft, the rotational gears had jammed and the gunner could not return to a position where he could exit into the plane.
The bomber was losing altitude fast and would have to make a crash landing. Everyone –crew, observers, and especially the ball turret gunner — knew what was going to happen. The pilot ordered the crew to ditch everything to keep the plane in the air for a few more precious minutes, but still the wheels could not be brought down. “We all watched in horror as it happened,” Rooney writes in “My War.” We watched as this man’s life ended, mashed between the concrete pavement of the runway and the belly of the bomber.”
And then young Sgt. Rooney went back to his city desk and his work. “I returned to London that night shaken and unable to write the most dramatic, the most gruesome, the most heart-wrenching story I had ever witnessed,” he recalls. “Some reporter I was.”
Thanks Andy.
Andy Rooney was a clown, a curmudgeon, and a left-wing fraud. He will not be missed in any house where Honor dwells.
I thought he was involved in the Normandy landing?
Of course not, but many WWII vets have talked freely about their combat roles. If you understand the nature of the military you don't expect chestpounding, but you expect pride in unit achievements. This is what I have heard from abundant vets, from Guadalcanal to Bastogne. Also stories that rival Catch-22 for black humor and sudden shock trauma.
You can read a number of first person accounts in Terkel's The Good War which offers a variety of experiences, and fortunately there are numerous other "oral history" projects going on around the country to archive the memories and unique experiences of the guys who licked the Axis Powers.
Crusty old commie. Because he was occassionally funny and topical doesn’t mean I honor an America hating communist.
After doing some research, he said he arrived on Utah Beach 4 days after the initial landing.
Never liked the guy.
“I thought he was involved in the Normandy landing?”
Which side?
bttt
One of the small pleasures of growing old comes in witnessing the fall of some of the prominent frauds, liars and bullies.
Obviously they will be judged by Another but I find no sorrow in the passing of the likes of Rooney.
Somebody has the chance to do a great comedy skit:
“A few minutes in Hell with Andy Rooney”
“You know what I don’t like about heat? It causes boils just below my skin. I don’t like that. The food here is terrible. The worst part are the maggots that get into everything. I’ve been able to meet some interesting people down here: Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, the 9-11 hijackers. They were as shocked as I was to wind up here. Wally Cronkite isn’t looking so good. I think he was expecting a better assignment...”
Tough crowd here this morning but the truth is a tough thing, sometimes. My personal condolences go out to his family even though I disagreed with Mr. Rooney’s politics.
Rooney was "suspended" for making a comment that offended the gays, but was reinstated when CBS discovered that "60 Minutes" had lost 20% of its audience.
yup. I know
Rooney was a faux curmudgeon. I never found the guy amusing or funny. When I did watch 60 minutes I usually switched it off before the old bore made his appearance. But I guess there was a market for him because it seems he was on there for a century. RIP
Rooney also flew a B-17 mission the first time the USAAF hit Germany. But more to the point, he served at a time when 16 million other Americans were serving, a surprisingly small number saw actual "you could die any second" combat conditions and he never claimed to be a hero, quite the opposite.
Heck, Bud Day saw less combat in WWII than Andy Rooney. Does that mean he wouldn't deserve our respect if he had stayed a lawyer after WWII instead of flying fighters?
The one thing he was right about ...
Rooney RODE on a B-17 as a draftee correspondent the second time, not the first.
You definitely have a hard time getting facts straight regarding Rooney's service and my posts.
Rooney wrote about being an on-the-ground embedded journalist. He said yes there were artillery but when the order to "move out" came, they moved back away from the action.
Definition of CURMUDGEON
1archaic : miser
2 : a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man
Examples of CURMUDGEON
< only a curmudgeon would object to the nursing home's holiday decorations >
Related to CURMUDGEON
Synonyms: bear, bellyacher, complainer, crab, crank, croaker, crosspatch, grouch, fusser, griper, grouser, growler, grumbler, grump, murmurer, mutterer, sourpuss, whiner
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