To a lot of folks Andy Rooney was just some old codger that appeared at the end of a TV show each Sunday night called "Sixty Minutes." Well Rooney was more than just some old codger with over grown eye brows, who looked like he had never smiled.
When I was a teenager I once heard an old fella, who was standing behind the old coal stove at Gunn's Grocery store in my hometown of Pimento, Indiana, say to some whipper snapper, "If you'd just shut up a bit more often and listen more to some folks around you who have lived life a bit more than you, you might just learn something." Rooney once said that :"The best classroom is at the feet of an elderly person."
I get that. I think we all can learn from the generation (s) before us. I have always felt that way about Rooney. Rooney lived to be ninety-two years old. He died November 4, 2011. Often on the show "Sixty Minutes" he would just share some bit of life he had experienced. His wit and wisdom caused me to pick up his book My War--Andy Rooney. Rooney served in WW II.
There are some classic lines in the book. He spoke of his mother. "She was a great mother to have and I've often wondered how she was able to get so much satisfaction from doing for us what so many mothers today do without satisfaction."
He once said of himself: "I never gave into the idea that I was stupid even though there was some evidence of that."
"A good teacher hands out more encouragement than pupils deserve as a matter of teaching technique." I like that one and also believe it should happen.
Rooney's assessment of college " College often brings out the worst in perfectly good young men and women."
Rooney makes an interesting observation about many college students. Today first rate colleges get as many as three to four times applicants as they can accept. Go to one of those campuses, colleges today on a party week-end and one might wonder what the college applicants who weren't selected must be like if these were the young people attending are the cream of the crop. Ouch.
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July 28, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson