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      NEW YORK (AP) - Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his
signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small
absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.


      Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But
his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was
short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after
delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary.


      Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but
major complications developed and he never recovered.


      "Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and
he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital,"
said his "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft.


      Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and
his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as
likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had
become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding
names.


      Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether
there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. As it
turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith.


      "I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of
people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once
said. "And they say, `Hey, yeah!' And they like that."


      Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast,
"60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978.
He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in
car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of
July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going
someplace."


      More than three decades later, he was railing about how
unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the
airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a
week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven
days."


      In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead
to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at
past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925
swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That
may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did."


      "Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the
world of journalism and the impact he made - as a colleague and a
friend - upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp.
president and CEO.


      Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive
producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He
loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him
very much."


      For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier
than most.


      "I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.


      He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that
most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's
what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the
truth."


      True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained
about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If
you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.


      Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS
radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and - with the bluntness
millions of people learned about later - told him his show could
use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to
TV, Rooney was his only writer.


      He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before
settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given
a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors"
in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and
women.


      "The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I
can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and
producer. They think I'm this guy on television."


      He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo
satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever
..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many
years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on
television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for
a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work.


      Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay
about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading
the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for
it.


      He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of
specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to
Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won
him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.


      His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended
him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an
interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida
while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among
blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.


      Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when
Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills
which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney
suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't
doing enough to help their own people.


      The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's
cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a
column suggesting it was time for Rooney to leave the broadcast. On
Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who
disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was
flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent
to the AP mail room.


      "Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later.
"One of my major shortcomings - I'm vindictive. I don't know why
that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back.
It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.


      He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war
in Iraq. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was
chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes"
commentaries.


      "I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say
what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I
get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time.


      Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y.,
and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in
high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World
War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes.


      With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton,
Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book,
"Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders,"
documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.


      Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years
before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children
and lived in New York, with homes in Norwalk, Conn., and upstate
New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of
ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News
correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of
the public service division of the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.


      Services will be private, and it's anticipated CBS News will
hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday.

Gallery

Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his
signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.

Andy Rooney, wry '60 Minutes' commentator, dies

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