[Vision2020] Former airman Cronauer, who inspired ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ film, has died

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Spokesman-Review at:

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Former airman Cronauer, who inspired ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ film, has died

NORFOLK, Va. – Adrian Cronauer, the man whose military radio antics inspired a character played by Robin Williams in the film “Good Morning, Vietnam,” has died. He was 79.

Mary Muse, the wife of his stepson Michael Muse, said Thursday that Cronauer died Wednesday from an age-related illness. He had lived in Troutville, Virginia, and died at a local nursing home, she said.

During his service as a U.S. Air Force sergeant in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, Cronauer opened his Armed Forces Radio show with the phrase, “Goooooood morning, Vietnam!”

Williams made the refrain famous in the 1987 film, loosely based on Cronauer’s time in Saigon.

“Yes, I did try to make it sound more like a stateside station,” Cronauer told the AP in 1989. “Yes, I did have problems with news censorship. Yes, I was in a restaurant shortly before the Viet Cong hit it. And yes, I did start each program by yelling, ‘Good Morning, Vietnam!’” The rest is what he delicately called “good script crafting.”

“In many ways, I’m a very conservative guy,” he said. “A lifelong, card-carrying Republican can’t be that much of an anti-establishment type.”

Cronauer was from Pittsburgh, the son of a steelworker and a schoolteacher. After the military, he worked in radio, television and advertising.

Muse, the wife of Cronauer’s stepson, said the movie “helped open dialogue and discussion that had long been avoided.”

“He loved the servicemen and servicewomen all over the world and always made time to personally engage with them,” she said.

She added that he was “a loving and devoted husband to his late wife Jeane (as well as a) father, grandfather and great-grandfather.”

Cronauer attended the University of Pennsylvania’s law school. He worked in communications law and later handling prisoner-of-war issues for the Pentagon.

“I always was a bit of an iconoclast, as Robin (Williams) was in the film,” Cronauer told the AP in 1999. “But I was not anti-military, or anti-establishment. I was anti-stupidity. And you certainly do run into a lot of stupidity in the military.”

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AFVN:  Good Morning Vietnam (Adrian Cronauer)
https://youtu.be/9N4GwVyhOgU

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Rest well, Mr.Cronauer.

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
  
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