Rick Mooney with his newborn granddaughter, Leah, in 2021. Rick passed away June 24.
Rick Mooney, a longtime ACN member and past associate editor of Missouri Ruralist and Farm Journal magazines, died at his home in Spooner, Wisconsin June 24.
Mooney was a native of Oregon, Wisconsin, and earned degrees at Edgewood College, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His long journalism career began at the Oregon Reporter newspaper in Oregon, Wisconsin, and he also was an announcer on WLKE Radio. After working at the Ruralist and Farm Journal, he established his own freelance photography and writing business, where he worked for 37 years.
Greg Lamp, a colleague of Mooney’s at Farm Journal, remembers his co-worker and friend.
“Many of us, especially from the old guard at Farm Journal, feel the loss of Rick Mooney. He was a terrific writer and photographer, but more than anything else — a good friend who loved the outdoors,” Lamp wrote in an email. “I’d guess many of us envied how he became a full-time freelancer so he could live in the woods and lakes he loved in Upper Wisconsin. Rest in peace, Rick.”
Mooney and his wife, Sue, had three sons, four granddaughters and a host of friends.
He loved photography; hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities, and was coach of the Spooner/Shell Lake High School boys and girls soccer programs. Rick and Sue built Blue Rock Ranch from the ground up, starting with cattle and later becoming a vegetable garden, which he shared with dozens of people. Here is his obituary.