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Gene Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas, on August 19, 1921. After High School, he studied three years of college pre-law and then transferred his academic interest to aeronautical engineering and qualified for a pilot's license.
He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941 and was ordered into training as a flying cadet when the war began. Emerging from Kelly Field, Texas, as a Second Lieutenant, Roddenberry was sent to the South Pacific where he entered combat. He was decorated with the Distinguished flying Cross and the Air Medal (1941-1946).
While in the South Pacific, he also began to write. He sold stories to flying magazines, and later poetry to publications including The New York Times.
Upon his return from combat, he became a crash investigator for the Air Force working out of Washington, D.C. (1946-1949). During this time, he also studied literature at Columbia University.
At war's end, he joined Pan American World Airways as an airline pilot (1949-1953). On a flight from Calcutta his plane lost two engines and caught fire in flight, crashing at night in the Syrian desert. As the senior surviving officer, Roddenberry sent two Englishmen swimming across the Euphrates River in quest of the source of a light he had observed just prior to the crash. Meanwhile, he parleyed with nomads who had come to loot the dead. The Englishmen reached a Syrian military outpost, which sent a small plane to investigate. Roddenberry returned in the plane to the outpost, where he broadcast a message that was relayed to Pan Am, which sent a stretcher plane to the rescue. Roddenberry later received a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his efforts during and after the crash.
Back in the States, Roddenberry continued flying until he saw television for the first time. Correctly estimating television's future, he realised that the new medium would need writers and decided that Hollywood's film studios would soon dominate the new industry. He acted immediately, left his flying career behind and moved to Los Angeles, only to find Hollywood and the television industry still in its infancy, with few openings for inexperienced writers. At a friend's suggestion, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department in order to see life from perspectives valuable to a writer.
By the time he became Sergeant, Roddenberry was selling scripts to such shows as "Goodyear Theatre", "The Kaiser Aluminum Hour", "Four Star Theatre", "The Jane Wyman Theatre", and "Naked City".
Established as a writer, he turned in his badge and became a freelancer. Later, he served as head writer for the highly popular series "Have Gun, Will Travel". His episode "Helen of Abiginian" won him the Writers Guild Award and was distributed to other writers as a model script for the series. Next, he created and produced "The Lieutenant" TV series, starring Gary Lockwood, who also eventually played Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell in the second Star Trek pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and Robert Vaughn, the story of a young man learning the lessons of life while in the United States Marine Corps. Other series he wrote for included Highway Patrol and Dr Kildare.
His best known creation, of course, Star Trek, followed (1966-l969). Once on the air, Star Trek developed a loyal following and has since become the first television series to have an episode preserved in the Smithsonian, where an 11-foot model of the U.S.S. Enterprise is also exhibited on the same floor as the Wright brothers' original aeroplane and Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis". In response to hundreds of thousands of letters from Star Trek fans, NASA's prototype space shuttle, was named after the beloved Starship, "Enterprise".
The show went outside television to win science fiction's coveted Hugo Award and then ultimately became a succession of feature films.
In addition to having served as executive consultant on Star Trek feature productions, Roddenberry added "novelist" to his writing repertoire - reputation as a futurist began to grow. His novelization of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (Pocket Books, 1979) sold close to a million copies and was ranked number one on national best seller lists for many weeks.
After the "Star Trek" series ended, Roddenberry produced the motion picture "Pretty Maids All in a Row," starring Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson and Telly Savalas, and has also made a number of pilots for TV. Among these are "Genesis II" for CBS (1973), about Earth recovering from World War III. Next came "The Questor Tapes" for NBC (1974), the story of an android in search of his creator.
Roddenberry also served as a member of the Writers Guild Executive Council and as a Governor of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He held three honorary doctorate degrees: Doctor of Humane Letters from Emerson College in Boston, Mass.; Doctor of Literature from Union College in Los Angeles (1977), and Doctor of Science from Clarkson College in Potsdam, New York (1981).
In 1986, Gene Roddenberry's fans presented him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the FIRST writer/producer to be so honoured.
In September 1987, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" continued the legend that Gene Roddenberry began more than 20 years earlier. As creator and producer of the original "Star Trek" television series, he launched a phenomenon without precedent in show business and attained a celebrity status unique among his peers. "Star Trek: The Next Generation," in its first year in syndication, was awarded with the 1987 Peabody Award for the "Best of the Best." The series garnered a total of eleven prestigious Emmy awards.
In February 1990, the March of Dimes honoured Roddenberry with the Jack Benny Memorial Award for lifetime achievement.
On Thursday, October 24, 1991, in Santa Monica, Gene Roddenberry died of cardiac arrest. His remains were flown in space on the space shuttle in a astronaut's personal items. He is survived by his wife Majel Barrett and their 19-year-old son, Gene Roddenberry, JR. He is also survived by his two grown daughters, Darlene and Dawn, from a previous marriage, as well as two grandchildren.
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