Cresson Henry Kearny

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cresson_Kearny

Cresson Henry Kearny (/ˈkɑrni/; January 7, 1914 — December 18, 2003) wrote several survival-related books based primarily on research performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Career

Kearny attended Texas Military Institute in the 1930s, where he became the commanding officer of the cadet corps, a champion runner and rifle shot, and valedictorian of his class. He attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania before earning a degree in civil engineering at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude in 1937. He won a Rhodes Scholarship and went on to earn two degrees in geology at the University of Oxford. During the Sudeten Crisis he acted as a courier for an underground group helping anti-Nazis escape from Czechoslovakia.

Following graduation from Oxford, Kearny joined a Royal Geographic Society expedition in the Peruvian Andes. He then worked as an exploration geologist for Standard Oil in the Orinoco jungles of Venezuela, where he became familiar with equipment and tools of the native inhabitants of the region. He later used the information gained from this experience to develop specialized jungle equipment for U.S. military forces.

In 1940, Kearny went on active duty as an infantry reserve lieutenant in the United States Army. Recognized for his knowledge of jungle travel and use of specialized tools and equipment, Kearny was soon assigned to Panama as the Jungle Experiments Officer of the Panama Mobile Force, and was promoted to captain. In that capacity he was able to invent, improve, and/or field test much of the specialized jungle equipment and rations used by U.S. infantrymen in World War II. Adoption of the jungle field ration and the jungle hammock as standard equipment by the US Army in World War II is credited to Kearny, along with improvements to many other items of tropical gear, such as the Panama-soled jungle boot and the M1942 Machete. In recognition of his service, he was soon promoted to major and awarded the Legion of Merit.

In 1943, he married May Willacy Eskridge of San Antonio.

Kearny later volunteered for duty with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where he served as a demolition specialist in southern China in 1944. As Japanese forces threatened to overwhelm Chinese defenses in southeast China, he walked night and day to escape capture. After contracting a serious viral disease during that campaign, he was bedridden for many months and partially crippled for several years. After a long convalescence, he retired from active duty with the U.S. Army.

In 1961 he took a position doing civil defense research with the Hudson Institute. In 1964 he joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense project. During the Vietnam War, Kearny served as a civilian adviser to the U.S. Army, making several trips to the theater of operations. He died in 2003.

In a New York Times obituary, his daughter Stephanie commented: "Throughout his life he believed in being prepared for trouble."

Published work

Kearny's most notable work is Nuclear War Survival Skills (NWSS). It describes civil defense research to determine the methods for ordinary citizens to build effective expedient shelters in a short period of time. It includes "MacGyver-like" plans for the Kearny air pump (KAP), Kearny fallout meter (KFM) and blast doors designed to be published in a newspaper prior to an attack. This book is in the public domain and is available for purchase, as well as free download online, from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

His other works include Jungle Snafus ... and Remedies, a book on the history of development of specialized equipment for use by military forces in jungle regions, and Will Civil Defense Work?

Bibliography

Jungle Snafus...And Remedies, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (1996), ISBN 1-884067-10-7

Nuclear War Survival Skills ISBN 0-942487-01-X

The KFM, A Homemade Yet Accurate and Dependable Fallout Meter (Co-author) ORNL-5040, January 1978

Will Civil Defense Work?, Greenhaven Press, June 1985, ISBN 99968-1-553-6

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Obituary

Cresson Henry Kearny

Former Oak Ridge resident

Cresson Henry Kearny, 89, of Montrose, Colo., died on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2003, after several years of declining health. According to his family, he had an interesting life that included being a world authority on nuclear war survival, starting the first U.S. jungle troops and originating more than two dozen inventions.

Born Jan. 7, 1914, in San Antonio, Texas, he was the son of Clinton Hall Kearny and Mary Chabot Cresson Kearny. He was a great-grandson of Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny, who led the American takeover of the Southwest and California in the Mexican-American War, and a great-great-stepgrandson of Gen. William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Mr. Kearny graduated valedictorian and cadet colonel from Texas Military Institute in San Antonio and attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. He won two prestigious scholarships to Princeton University, where he was a varsity letterman on the track team, graduating in 1937 Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. The following summer he led a small expedition in the Sierra Madre of Mexico for the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, N.M.

Subsequently, Mr. Kearny was a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University, where he was on the varsity track and swimming teams, graduating from Queen's College with a degree in geology in 1939. While at Oxford he briefly served as a courier to Berlin, carrying information for an underground Quaker group that helped Jews escape from the Nazis.

Post-graduation Mr. Kearny was a member of a Royal Geographic Society expedition in the Peruvian Andes, then worked as an exploration geologist for Standard Oil in Venezuela. Believing the United States soon would be at war and hoping to improve American jungle warfare capability, in 1940 he quit his job and went on active duty as a reserve first lieutenant. He was sent to Panama where he formed the first U.S. Jungle Platoon, developed jungle tactics, and designed specialized equipment. Much of his equipment, for which he obtained numerous patents but refused payment, was adopted by the U.S. Army and used by hundreds of thousands of American and allied servicemen during World War II. Some of his most important inventions were a breath-inflated, backpackable boat, the jungle boot, the jungle hammock and the jungle pack. During this period he was promoted to major and intermittently worked with the office of the quartermaster general's special forces in Washington, D.C. For meritorious service he was awarded the Legion of Merit.

In 1943, Mr. Kearny married May Willacy Eskridge, also of San Antonio. He joined the Office of Strategic Services in 1944, stationed in China where he worked in demolitions, guerilla tactics, sabotage and intelligence. After contracting a crippling disease at the age of 31 he retired as an honorary lieutenant colonel.

Mr. Kearny and his wife bought a ranch in the Texas hill country, where his health improved. He occasionally worked elsewhere, including consulting at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where in 1951 he designed the wetsuit, which unknown to him, had been invented a few months previously. He also independently invented and patented an underwater spear gun.

In 1954, he and his family moved to a farm in southwest Colorado. For several years Mr. Kearny worked as an oil, gas and uranium geologist/prospector, staking several claims, including a productive uranium claim in the last land rush in the United States. Mr. Kearny, who his family said always loved dinosaurs, also came upon the largest dinosaur bone discovered to that time, which was lying unrecognized on a rockhound's porch. The bone is now at the Smithsonian.

Concerned, since his Princeton days about the possibility of nuclear war, Mr. Kearny began to work independently on nuclear survival. In 1961, leading nuclear strategist, Herman Kahn, recruited him to join the Hudson Institute, where Kearny worked on nuclear defense issues. Due to his expertise, he met Charles Lindbergh, whom Mr. Kearny advised on building a blast shelter.

In 1964, Nobel Laureate Dr. Eugene Wigner asked Mr. Kearny to join the Civil Defense Project, which Wigner was forming at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At ORNL, Kearny developed shelters and devices which people can make to improve their chances of surviving a nuclear conflict. His most important invention, according to his family, was the Kearny Fallout Meter, a highly reliable radiation meter made of materials commonly found in homes. His book, "Nuclear War Survival Skills," which, according to his family, is known as "the bible of Civil Defense," includes instructions and survival advice. By the mid-1990s over 600,000 copies had been sold, with translations into Hebrew, Chinese and other languages. Mr. Kearny copyrighted the book with the condition that the book could be reproduced by anyone and renounced any royalty payments. The book is available on the Internet. He also wrote numerous publications on a variety of defense topics.

Kearny took occasional leave to work on other projects. From 1967 to 1968, given the civilian equivalent of a four-star general's rank, he worked in Vietnam with the science adviser to Gen.s Westmoreland and Abrams, improving infantrymen's equipment. He also developed simple measures to counteract fuel-air explosives and was an expert on counterinsurgency. At a Defense Advance Research Project Agency Symposium in 1968, the director stated in his opening address that he "had not specialized in counterinsurgency work, but had studied the writings of leading authorities, including Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, and Cresson Kearny." In 1970, Mr. Kearney advised the Israelis on civil defense. For his defense work, in 1972 he was awarded the Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service, the United States' highest civilian medal.

In 1979, Mr. Kearny retired from ORNL, partly to be at liberty to speak more freely against American defense policies, especially Mutual Assured Destruction, and inadequate nuclear civil defense preparations, according to his family. In 1981, he was invited to China to advise on civil defense. During the 1991 Gulf War, he recruited citizens across America to make hundreds of thousands of protective plastic rifle bags, which, according to his family, the military had neglected to provide and send them to soldiers to prevent sand from jamming their M-16s. In later years, Mr. Kearny summarized his jungle expertise in "Jungle Snafus -- and Remedies," which is used by units of the U.S. Special Forces as a training textbook. In 1996 he was presented with the Edward Teller Award for the Defense of Freedom, "for his independent and ingenious contributions to the great problem of survival."

In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his younger brother and only sibling, Clinton Charles Kearny, and his eldest grandchild, Morgan Kearny Fosse.

His family said his intelligence, creativity, persistence and dedication to human survival were appreciated by his peers and earned the admiration and love of his family. According to his family, he lived a full and productive life, and had a long, loving marriage and a large and close family.

Mr. Kearny is survived by his wife of 60 years, May Willacy Eskridge Kearny; a son, Cresson Kearny and wife, Lynn Boyer Kearny; and by four daughters, Adelia Willacy Kearny and husband, John Peter Wakeland, Diana Catherine Kearny Fosse, Susanna Joyce Kearny and husband, Frederick Rommel Eberle, and Stephanie Kearny and husband, Kenneth Noel Belcourt.

He is also survived by six grandchildren, Stephen Kearny Wakeland, Anna Kearny Wakeland, Amber Eskridge Fosse, Gabriel Prins Fosse, Clay Cresson Fosse and Elise Kearny Eberle; and by one great-grandchild, Akira Lynn Fosse Jones.

Following cremation, a private family memorial service will be in Albuquerque, N.M.