Nancy Reynolds Rooney, 93, Andy Rooney's sister
wazzzy
Lake George was everything to Nancy Reynolds Rooney. She couldn't wait
to get there in the spring. You had to pry her away in the fall.
On Thursday night, the Albany native died in her home overlooking the
lake her family had visited since 1915. She was 93.
Her brother, "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney, called her the kind
of person who "made everything very clear to anybody."
"There was no doubt about it -- she was curt and abrupt and
opinionated," Rooney, 88, said in a phone interview Saturday night.
Rooney was born in New York City, but she grew up in Albany. Her
father was a salesman for the Albany Felt Company. She graduated from
the Albany Academy for Girls and the Katharine Gibbs School in Boston.
She worked a range of jobs, none of which paid much. She dispatched
buses for Greyhound in Albany. She was a manager for the Mead Pulp and
Paper Company. She managed the office of author and commentator
William F. Buckley, Jr.
"She was born and raised at a time when not much was expected of
women, and not much was allowed for them," said her nephew, Brian
Rooney, 55, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for ABC News.
One constant in her life was Lake George. Rooney was a 2-year-old when
she first visited the summer haven. She came back every year after her
family bought a cottage in Pilot Knob in 1926.
She knew the area back when houses had two-by-fours for interiors.
Packet steamers delivered mail and groceries. The last miles north of
Glens Falls were unpaved.
She was one of the "old characters who had been here from the
beginning," Brian Rooney said. The type who could tell you about
speakeasies and $8 tax bills.
During her last weeks, she said this: "I'm going somewhere, heaven or
hell, I just don't know which."
By MARC PARRY, Staff writer