August 28th will be the 50th anniversary of THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON and Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In a recent post, John Hightower, (who with 250,000 other people attended the 1963 march) mentioned my dad’s 1963 Twilight Zone episode “He’s Alive.” Although about neo-nazism, his message could just as easily apply to the egregious conditions prompting the original march.

This episode was the only one that makes no reference to “The Twilight Zone” in its closing narration and when it aired, my father and the network were flooded with hate mail.

Tragically, Dr. King's dream is yet to be realized and the message is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago:

“Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami? Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.” Rod Serling

“He heard the sound of voices . . . and laughter—and hellos and goodbyes—and all the jumbled language of the past—so sweet, so unbearably sweet.”
They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar

“I imagine my dad driving slowly down Bennett Avenue, his old street, and passing by his house, now slightly in need of painting, a little worse for wear. I wonder if, stopping briefly, he pictures his mother still there, opening the front door, seeing him suddenly, a vision she cannot quite be certain of, holding up her hand to block the afternoon sun. Or maybe it is his father he sees out in the driveway, washing the old Ford, suddenly dropping the hose, which snakes through the air, spraying memories my dad can almost touch as he imagines both his parents running toward him in a kind of dreamlike, slow-motion reverie that only this level of recall can recreate. Or perhaps, driving a little farther, he sees the ghosts of his boyhood friends running barefoot alongside the car or calling out to him from their porches, waving to him and calling, ‘Come on, Roddy, come on,’ until the sounds of the present bring him back and the passage of years and everything he has imagined are gone again.”

AS I KNEW HIM: My Dad Rod Serling

It was years ago, decades, actually, but I can still see him: my father carrying that tattered white box out to the blue lawn chair and sorting through all the letters he’d told me were to and from his parents before he went off to war.

I’d usually see him from a distance, waiting by the screen door for him to finish, watching as he read, listening when sometimes he’d chuckle, or mumble something out loud, then holding up a photo of his dad who died while my father was overseas. Shaking his head, my dad would carefully place the letters and photos back into the box and stare off at nothing.

I would sit beside him then, only a limited comprehension of his journey but always knowing what would come next, “Pops,” he’d say, calling me by one of my nicknames, “If only you had known your grandfather.” And he’d smile at me nodding back at him and reach down to pet our dog.

On that lawn all those years ago I couldn’t possibly understand his loss. Nor could I have ever imagined that I would one day say those same words to my own children, “If only you had known your grandfather.”

www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-serling/rod-serling-twilight-zone_b_341...‎

As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling | Bookreporter.com www.bookreporter.com › Reviews‎
May 10, 2013 – To Anne Serling, the imposing figure the public saw hosting "The Twilight Zone" each week was not the father she ... Bookreporter.com logo ...

Thank you all for your continued kind and wonderful messages and comments. Please know I will get back to you ASAP; just a little inundated right now but I WILL respond!

"As long as people talk about you, you're not really dead. As long as they speak your name, you continue. A legend doesn't die just because the man does."

RIP Jack Klugman & Jonathan Winters

A GAME OF POOL -George Clayton Johnson