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My dad, once quoted as saying that although he felt his writing was “momentarily adequate,” did not believe it “would stand the test of time.” Fast forward decades to the recent "Twilight Zone" marathon. How incredibly honored and humbled he would have been, as was I, to read what Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote on New Year’s Day:
“It all comes down to ‘The Twilight Zone’ — someday the world will understand this fact. All life lessons, all of human nature’s tricks and tragedies, are contained somewhere in Rod Serling’s slow, black-and-white, low-tech short plays. Also, many, many contemporary TV shows and movies have roots in “Zone” episodes.”

"Everybody has to have a hometown, Binghamton's mine. In the strangely brittle, terribly sensitive make-up of a human being, there is a need for a place to hang a hat or a kind of geographical womb to crawl back into, or maybe just a place that's familiar because that's where you grew up.

"When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling—and that's one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find—I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me."

—Rod Serling

The first Twilight Zone I saw was “Nightmare at 20,000 feet.” My father and I watched it together, sitting in twin wicker chairs pulled up close to a small television at our cottage. After a few moments, I moved the chair closer to my dad and looked from the television screen to him. I was stunned that this is what he did, wrote these terrifying stories. I later learned that this particular episode “Nightmare” was written by Richard Matheson, but at the time that fact was of little consolation. It was still my father who appeared at the beginning and the end of the show.
Although it was initially disturbing to think that my father was connected to this scary stuff, the thought almost immediately vanished because this was not the dad I knew. There was nothing scary about him. And I was excited to see him on television!

Excerpt AS I KNEW HIM © Anne Serling 2012

" When I first began noting down the early beginnings of REQUIEM, I had one basic idea…I wanted to analyze a human being who fought for a living but who was nonetheless a human being. I wanted a guy who would act, react, feel and think without sounding like the stereotyped, cauliflower-eared, punchy human wreck who has now become so familiar that he’s funny. I wanted the dull, slow, painfully halting speech to elicit sympathy and understanding, but not a laugh… Requiem’s basic premise is that every man can and must search for his own dignity." Rod Serling

AS I KNEW HIM

“When asked in an interview which of his scripts he had special feelings for, my dad mentioned Requiem for a Heavyweight and an episode of Night Gallery called 'They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,' for which he received an Emmy nomination.
'Tim Riley’ is similar to The Twilight Zone’s 'Walking Distance.' Both truly represent my father’s writing at its absolute best and both evoke the theme of going backwards and going home again.
Randolph Lane, the main character in the story, lives on Bennett Avenue, just like my dad. Lane was also a paratrooper in World War II. And, like my dad, he has a preoccupation with the past, and a particular sense of nostalgia and infinite longing.”

AS I KNEW HIM: My Dad, Rod Serling (New Title of Memoir)

“On October 11th and 12th, The Rod Serling Video festival in Association with S.T.A.R Southern Tier Actors Read presented a stage reading of Rod Serling’s Emmy-award winning Television play PATTERNS.”

The production and the cast were (once again) terrific. Last year they presented “Eye of the Beholder.” How excited my dad would have been to see these productions come back to life after all of these decades—particularly held in his old high school.

As I wrote in my memoir: My dad said he couldn’t make up characters-- "They have to be people I’ve known. I’ve never known any businessmen very well, but I had a captain during the war who had the same kind of viciousness as the executive in Patterns. In the script, I simply put him into a business suit….”

PHOTO: Dad with Fielder Cook, director, while working on PATTERNS January 1955

ABC NEWS AND PEOPLE MAGAZINE PRESENT: "BEST IN TV: THE GREATEST TV SHOWS OF OUR TIME WITH BARBARA WALTERS, A SPECIAL EDITION OF 20/20."

"Television Fans Submit More Than A Milluion Votes In An Unprecedented Online Ballot." The Twilight Zone places second in the favorite drama category.

My dad would have been stunned by this recognition. He was once quoted as saying he did not believe his writing would stand the test of time.

"Being like everybody is the same as being nobody."
From Twilight Zone Episode: "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You."