Lawrence 'Larry' F. Rooney, 99

Lawrence "Larry" F. Rooney, who led a "ricochet life" that took him from a Montana homestead to adventures around the world and finally back to his beloved hometown of Whitefish, died May 1, 2026, in Kalispell at 99 years old. His life encompassed a wide variety of activity and geography, but the central motif was his marriage and family.

His parents homesteaded near Cut Bank in the early 1900s. The sixth of six children, he was the only one born in a hospital (in Conrad) on Nov. 21, 1926. He said his importance was put into perspective when he was a small infant on the family ranch. His mother was frying doughnuts in a vat of grease, and the grease and the shack caught fire. His father grabbed a dishpan filled with fresh doughnuts, carried them outside, and put them under a fence line where they would not be stepped on by cattle. Then he rushed back and got Larry.

His parents lost the homestead during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and his father worked the rest of his career for the Great Northern in Blackfoot, Shelby and Whitefish, where the family moved in 1931. From about age ten, Larry always held part-time jobs, including that of "paper-boy" for the Whitefish Pilot and the Missoulian. While still in high school, he was also caddie on the Whitefish golf course, jack-of-all-trades at the Cadillac Hotel, caretaker at the Whitefish cemetery, and brush piler and fire fighter for the State at Olney. In high school and college, he worked for the Great Northern, such jobs as call boy for train crews, member of the wheel gang on a RIP track, icer for both passenger and trains and Western Fruit and laborer on the B&B (bridges and buildings). He continued part-time work on dozens of other jobs throughout his long (12-year) college career.

Before graduating from high school, at age 17, he enlisted in the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program and served until 1945, when he was awarded a medical discharge. He earned an MA in English from the University of Montana in 1950 and spent 1950-1951 as a Fulbright Scholar in France (more tourist than scholar). In 1956, he received a Ph.D. in geology from Indiana University.

While teaching as a graduate student at the Indiana University field camp near Whitehall, Montana, he courted one of his students, Rosalia (Buddie) Rey, whom he married in 1956. They were inseparable the rest of his life, for he never confused the relative importance of career and family. In retirement, he maintained close ties with his sons and daughters-in-law, writing them daily. He liked language and always preferred to write than to talk so that he could create the right phrase. He chose for his epitaph, I wrote; therefore I was.

Larry and Buddie embarked on their first adventure, working together for Mobil Oil of Canada, Ltd. in Libya 1956-1958. He felt lucky to spend two years criss-crossing the Sahara in a Land Rover with a crew of three or four Arabs, especially Ali Mabruk Dawi, with whom he bonded deeply. He loved the desert, the stark landscape, the cleanliness, the mammoth dunes, the sky filled with brilliant stars, and above all the absence of people other than those he met in the occasional caravan. During vacations, they traveled throughout Europe by automobile and had many adventures. Once, in a hotel on the island of Malta, when they were trapped in a bathroom with no clothes and locked out of their room, he climbed out the window and along a ledge four floors above the street to their bedroom, entered through the window, and rescued them.

After Libya, he taught a year at the University of Texas and worked three years for Humble Oil in Mattoon, Illinois, where two sons were born, before returning to Indiana University, where he worked eight years for the Indiana Geological Survey and where the third son was born. During this period, he published many scientific papers and topical essays.    

In the meantime, they returned to Whitefish whenever they could and bought property hoping one day to return permanently. A year after Flathead Valley Community College opened, Larry applied and was hired to teach geology and English. Buddie was hired as librarian. They built a log house on Whitefish Lake and enjoyed five wonderful years there expecting to remain until retirement. In 1975, however, his vocal chords gave out, and he was granted a leave of absence. Luckily, he had been offered a job with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. His vocal chords never recovered, so he remained with the Survey until retirement at the end of 1994.

With the USGS he worked seven years in Saudi Arabia, first in exploring for industrial minerals from a field camp near the Yemen border and then in supervising the publishing unit in Jeddah. With Buddie and their three sons they traveled the world. In 1983, he returned to the States to head the USGS publishing branch in Menlo Park, California and then transferred in 1986 to head the publishing branch in Denver, Colorado. He received the USGS’s Meritorious Service Award and the Society of Mining Engineering’s Hal Hardinge Award in industrial minerals.

Larry was intensely concerned about population growth. From his college years in the 1950s until his death, he believed that the major threat to the earth is human overpopulation and wrote and spoke on the subject. He cherished his custom Montana license plate, 2MNYPPL. In spite of this cloud over the future, he was a romantic and loved life. He often said that he was not only happy but that he knew that he was happy. His glass was not half full, it was full.

He traveled much. As a student, he hitchhiked or rode the trains all over Europe, from Norway to Sicily, from Ireland to Austria. His first trips on ocean liners were on the Liberté crossing the Atlantic to and from France. He loved train travel, sleeping in berths and dining in the dining cars, especially on the old Great Northern. He traveled by train whenever he could, including in Europe, Australia and Egypt.

Sometimes with one or all of the children, he and Buddie traveled over most of the globe, from the southern tip of South America to the northern tip of Norway and around the world in both hemispheres. Their accommodations ranged from a first-class stateroom on the Constitution across the Atlantic to fourth class in the hold of a ship from Tunisia to Marseilles. They crossed the Pacific in a freighter. In most countries, they traveled by rented cars and sometime stayed in one location a month. They did safaris in Africa, swam in Lake Toba in Sumatra, stayed on a tea plantation in Sri Lanka. In retirement, he and Buddie hiked in Ireland, Wales, Italy and Austria. They rented an apartment for a month in Spain. With the entire family they drove around Argentina, dining on the fish the children caught. They played lousy but delightful golf in more than a dozen countries in Europe, Africa, Down Under, South America and Asia. As he grew older, they traveled more with groups and friends.

But he loved the American West, especially Montana, more than any place he visited — and Whitefish most of all because he grew up there, a member of the WHS class of 1944. In his retirement, he returned to Whitefish and built a house on the golf course. He titled his 2016 autobiography "A Ricochet Life" to capture the roundabout journey that ultimately brought him home. He and Buddie drove through much of the U.S. in an RV. Breakfast was his favorite time of day. A favorite pastime was to stop early in the morning in restaurants across the United States and watch and listen to working people as they began their day. He also loved sitting in coffee shops around the world, but especially in Whitefish, as a reader and voyeur.

He always said he wanted to die healthy, and believed in eating vegetables, fruits, and grains, drinking milk and wine (separately), and flossing his teeth. He exercised regularly, hiking, swimming, or cross-country skiing in the winter (until age 80) and hiking, swimming, and playing golf in the summer. (He bought a grave site visible from the tenth tee box on the Whitefish north course.) 

He was preceded in death by his father, Charles, mother, Marie, brothers, William, Robert, John and James, and sister, Marcia. He is survived by his wife, Rosalia (Buddie) and sons, Sean (Melodye), Clive (Julie) and Brian (Carolyn), and grandchildren, Brigit, Conor, Jorden, Shane, Cole, Sam and Jane Rooney.