This fast-paced memoir spans a major part of the 20th Century. The author is a retired national association executive who set out to tell the fascinating story of his life for his family and descendants. Born in 1931 in the Pennsylvania coal region and now living in Colorado, John B. Mannion describes his early family life and carries us along through a life lived on the fringes of the great events of the last century.
The Wind at My Back describes, in swift prose, the author's Irish-American family and school life during the poor but peaceful years that preceded the Second World War and the events that shaped him as a young man.
After pitching kitchen gadgets on the boardwalk of Atlantic City at age 17 with Ed McMahon, later of The Tonight Show, and then forming a night club comedy act with another World War II veteran, the author joined the Army during the Korean War. Mannion recounts with humor and fondness his adventures in Europe and at Fort Knox, where he earned an officers' commission and became the Post Entertainment Officer. A couple of pre-marital affairs are described, along with Mannion's introduction to race relations and McCarthyism in the early 1950's.
Leaving military service in 1954, with his wife pregnant with the first of their five children, Mannion returned to Washington, launching a brief career in network religious broadcasting and advising the nation's television networks on their coverage of President John F. Kennedy's funeral. He later returned to Europe during the Second Vatican Council, pressing for reforms in Catholic liturgy and teaching, but ultimately becoming disenchanted with organized religion.
Working as a government official andconsultant in various agencies in the late 60's and early 70's the author then divorced and moved to Denver in 1981 as the Deputy Director of the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, becoming the CEO of AWWA in 1988. His years at the helm of the world's largest society of water professionals took him abroad regularly and led to an intriguing assortment of adventures. In 2001, he retired, residing with his wife in Littleton, CO.
The Wind at My Back is crammed with fascinating stories about a busy executive and his family during the eventful century just passed.