WWII book is 'labor of love'
Alumni & Friends, Winter/Spring 2005

UW-Whitewater history professor Richard Haney has written a book close to his heart. “When is Daddy Coming Home? An American Family During World War II,” published by the Wisconsin State Historical Society, is now available in bookstores.

The book is based on more than 200 letters that Haney’s mother received from his father, who served in the Army’s 17th Airborne division and was killed in service. The family of three lived in Janesville.

Haney describes the nine-chapter book as a combination of social history, military history and biography. "It was a labor of love," Haney said.

The letters were written between February 1944 and March 1945. They arrived bearing news from places like the Battle of the Bulge, where the senior Haney was wounded, to an airdrop over the Rhine River. Yet, the tone of the letters revealed a man “secure in himself, but who missed home very much.”

At UW-Whitewater, Haney teaches “Recent America since 1945” and “America in Depression, Prosperity and World War II 1919-1945.” He received his undergraduate degree from UW-Whitewater and his master’s and doctoral degrees from UW-Madison.