A ricochet life

Larry Rooney has led a ricochet life.

Rooney spent his early years in Cut Bank and Blackfoot before his family moved to Whitefish when he was 5. After graduating high school he entered the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program, lived in Los Angles attending city college, returned to Whitefish for summer jobs, graduated from the University of Montana, earned a Fullbright Scholarship to study in France and taught at the University of Texas and Flathead Valley Community College. He lived and worked Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, California, Colorado, Libya, and Saudi Arabia, before retiring to Whitefish.

Rooney, 90, started writing down bits about his life. After retiring in 1994, he began looking into his family history. Eventually the project turned into writing a sort of memoir he has published as “A Ricochet Life.”

“I have had a varied life — going from one thing to another,” Rooney says sitting in the living room of his home in Grouse Mountain.

In the introduction to his book, Rooney talks about his best man at his wedding who was a friend and fellow graduate student. The man had a proposed trajectory of his life to its final target. Ronney’s life was the opposite.

“My career was in stark contrast, not a smooth trajectory toward a goal but a series of reactions to causes external and internal,” he writes. “You might call it a ricochet life, from school to school, profession to profession, job to job, and place to place. It was a recipe for disaster. What saved me, as you will see in the following pages, was skill with a quill and a great capacity for loving.”

Rooney likes to say his life is “second best to a bowl of doughnuts.” It almost became the title to his book.

When he was a child living with his family in Cut Bank, the oil on the stove caught fire while his mother made doughnuts. His father rushed in grabbed the doughnuts from the top of the stove and took them outside, then he returned inside for Rooney.

Rooney describes his move as a child to Whitefish in his book. He writes “moving to Whitefish was moving to Paradise. Unlike Blackfoot and Cut Bank, it was a town of green forested hills and water, and it had good public schools.”

“I was lucky the first ricochet of significance of my life was the move to Whitefish,” he said. Though he has traveled extensively since, he says Whitefish remains the best place to live.

Rooney, who began as an English major in college, eventually switched his studies to geology. With an English degree he had planned to teach, but because of a fear of public speaking changed. Though he would work for oil companies and the U.S. Geological Survey, he did eventually teach also. He says he never got over his fear of public speaking, but rather learned to master it over the years.

“I write all the time,” he said. “Each day I write to the family and friends. It’s quite the list that gets my daily message by email.”

When he was finished writing his life’s story — he admits the story is likely to be only of interest to his family — the book’s publisher suggested he put it for sale on Amazon so those interested could purchase the book directly saving Rooney from shipping them himself.

While attending Indiana University, Rooney met his future wife, Buddie. He was working as an instructor at the Indiana Geologic Field Station south of Jefferson on the Boulder River when she attended the field course. They would eventually marry on Jan. 28, 1956.

“Buddie and I have been together almost every possible moment; we rarely separated voluntarily,” he writes. “Whenever I see her at a distance, as across the street or even across the width of the store, I feel a sense of warmth and happiness.”

Together as a couple and then eventually with their three sons they traveled the world. After marrying, Rooney accepted a job working for Mobil Oil of Canada as an exploration geologist in Libya. Later he would accept a job working for the USGS in Saudia Arabia.

Their three children became world travelers along the way too. One graduated high school in Spain, another in Egypt and the third in Massachusetts.

Rooney recalls with great fondness the two years he spent working in the Sahara Desert. He enjoyed camping in the wilderness in the sand dunes where there were few other people. He recalls lying in a sleeping bag looking out with no hills, no trees and watching a “big bowl of sky with just stars.”

“I would have been happy to stay there for a lifetime,” he said.

As the Rooneys have lived and traveled the world, the couple seeks out coffee shops. At home in Whitefish, they make daily morning trips to Montana Coffee Traders.

“We go to all the coffee shops,” Rooney said. “The best coffee I had was in New Zealand.”

The Rooneys are scheduled to take a trip this spring to Australia and then later to Italy. In retirement, Larry and Buddie have traveled the world together.

Larry says he prefers to be traveling with his wife.

“We’ve been married 60 years,” Rooney said. “You’re as close as you can be when you’re traveling. When you’re at home, you could be 200 feet apart in the house not really together, but when you’re traveling you’re always together.”