Henry Wallace Kinnan was an American decorated World War II hero, was one of the first well-known US pioneer television broadcast meteorologists.
24 Facts About Wally Kinnan
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Wally Kinnan, who served in World War II as a B-17 bomber pilot and then an advanced weather officer attaining the rank of captain in the United States Air Force before resigning in March 1953 to enter broadcasting in Oklahoma.
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Wally Kinnan met his wife, the former Marjorie G Ahrendt, at North High School in Columbus, Ohio, where they both attended.
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Wally Kinnan was a trumpet player with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra and Charlie Barnet during his undergraduate years at Ohio State out of love for music and as a way to help pay for school.
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Wally Kinnan was a member of the Theta Tau fraternity and the Ohio State Football band.
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Wally Kinnan left Ohio State to enlist in the United States Army Air Forces.
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Wally Kinnan studied meteorology from 1947 to 1948 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and took an advanced course in Tropical Meteorology in 1951 at the University of Chicago.
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Wally Kinnan enlisted in the Air Corps on March 31,1942, at Fort Hayes, Columbus, Ohio.
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Wally Kinnan began flight training as an aviation cadet in September 1942 and was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduation from pilot training on April 12,1943.
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Wally Kinnan initially trained to be a fighter pilot the Air Corps needed bomber pilots and Kinnan, like many others, was reassigned to bombers.
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Wally Kinnan's aircraft was shot down over Eygalieres, Vichy France on August 17,1943.
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Wally Kinnan sustained shrapnel injuries which were compounded when he bailed out too close to the ground and made hard impact.
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Wally Kinnan's injuries prevented him from attempting evasion and he was captured.
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Wally Kinnan was first taken to a hospital in Arles.
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Wally Kinnan persuaded the German captors to find some decent musical instruments so they could put on some organized musical programs.
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One instrument was an unusual trombone that Wally Kinnan described as a plumber's nightmare.
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The 1963 motion picture The Great Escape, which greatly depicts some of the Serenders and Wally Kinnan's experiences, showed a choir singing while the escape started but in actuality, it was the Serenaders.
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Food was scarce and Bunch credited Wally Kinnan with saving his life by sharing a potato.
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Wally often told the story of how they drew straws to determine the order of who would receive the seal first; Kinnan was number 3, while Davis and Jehn were numbers 1 and 2, respectively.
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Wally Kinnan left WKY-TV in September 1958 for WRCV-TV in Philadelphia, which at the time was owned by NBC.
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Wally Kinnan worked alongside sports anchor Jim Graner at WKYC; later, from 1978 to 1980, he worked at station WTSP in Tampa.
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Wally Kinnan later went on to serve on the Board of the American Meteorological Society for Radio and Television Broadcasting and the Committee on Industrial Meteorology.
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Wally Kinnan was the founding Director of the Franklin Institute Weather Center with Col.
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Wally Kinnan died at the age of 83 of an aortic aneurysm on Friday, November 22,2002, in Houston, Texas.