Edmund J. Rooney Jr.: 1924 – 2007: `Door-Kicking’ Reporter Always Ready for newsVeteran Journalist for the Chicago Daily News Went on to Teach His Trade at Loyola University
By Trevor Jensen, Chicago Tribune
Jan. 28–In the parlance of old-time newspapermen, Edmund J. Rooney Jr. was a first-rate “door-kicker.”
A 26-year veteran of the Chicago Daily News who earned a doctoral degree in education and taught journalism at Loyola University, Dr. Rooney had a reputation as a tenacious reporter who got to sources first and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“He was a personality that stood out. He had a big voice, and he was very straight ahead,” said Daily News colleague Bob Herguth. “He hated to get beaten on anything.”
Dr. Rooney, 82, died Saturday, Jan. 27, at his home in Smith Village in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, his son Tim said. Dr. Rooney had suffered from several ailments, including a stroke in December.
An old-fashioned street reporter who worked out of a car equipped with a police scanner and a two-way radio to his city desk, Dr. Rooney shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his paper’s investigation into state auditor Orville Hodge, who went to prison for embezzlement.
His days started with pre-dawn telephone calls, and on his way to work he often would stop by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s house in Bridgeport for quotes. Most of his stories were called in to rewrite men in the office.
“Eddie was very concise, and he was an excellent judge of breaking news,” said Phillip O’Connor, who for years took Dr. Rooney’s notes at the Daily News. “He knew what was important and what was not important. He wouldn’t waste your time.”
Dr. Rooney always kept a packed suitcase in the trunk of his car, ready to be sent on assignment. “His motto was, ‘I’m on my way,’ ” Herguth said.
In 1965, Dr. Rooney was at the civil rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.. In 1969, he spent several weeks in Massachusetts, after U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his female companion.
In the early 1970s, Dr. Rooney and his family were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner when the phone rang. It was the newspaper alerting him to a prison riot out of town.
“All my mom heard him saying was, ‘I’m on my way,’ ” his son said.
Although he didn’t earn his undergraduate degree until 1977, Dr. Rooney started teaching journalism classes at Loyola University in the early 1960s to help support his family, which included six children. When the Daily News closed in 1978, he started teaching full time and continued taking classes, earning a master’s degree in urban studies in 1981 and a doctoral degree in education in 1992, when he was 67.
Dr. Rooney started the National Center of Freedom of Information at Loyola in 1982. The center served as a clearinghouse for reporters and others interested in 1st Amendment issues. He continued to teach through the late 1990s.
The son and grandson of Chicago police officers, Dr. Rooney spent most of his childhood in the St. Columbanus Parish on the South Side. Smitten with newspapers from a young age, he and a friend put out pencilled copies of a neighborhood newspaper, and he was on the school paper staff at St. Rita High School. Years later, he was named to St. Rita’s Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in journalism and education.
He worked as a copy boy at the old Chicago Sun newspaper and took classes at Loyola University before being drafted into the Army during World War II. A medic and clerk, he served in North Africa and Italy, taking part on the invasion at Anzio.
After the war, Dr. Rooney worked at the Southtown Economist, now the Daily Southtown, and spent a year at the City News Bureau wire service before joining the Daily News in early 1952. He married the former Mary Flynn in 1956 and in 1959 spent a year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow.
With tuition benefits through his teaching, all six of Dr. Rooney’s children graduated from Loyola. Three went on to become reporters in Chicago.
Columnist Mike Royko, in an inscription to Dr. Rooney on a copy of his book “Boss,” lauded his Daily News colleague as “one of the greatest door-kickers this town has ever seen. And that, for other eyes, ain’t an accolade we toss around lightly.”
Dr. Rooney’s wife died in 2000.
In addition to his son Tim, he is survived by three other sons, Edmund J. III, John and Peter; two daughters, Ellen Martin and Molly Kelly; a brother, Robert; and 13 grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
ttjensen@tribune.com
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.