As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling

WHEN I BEGAN THIS BOOK seven years ago, I had three goals: (1) to navigate my way through that minefield of grief after my dad’s death; (2) to learn more about the professional “dimension” of my father; and (3) to dispel once and for all the offensive assertions that some have written, characterizing my father as a dark and tortured person.

An unforeseen “gift” came at an early reading I gave before the book was complete. After the reading, a woman came up and told me her father had a terminal illness—he would be gone any day. She said that having heard me read, she knew she would be okay. Learning that my words helped her moved me immensely, and all I could do was hug her. Grief is universal and ultimately slams us all; there is no correct way to pilot it. I learned that. At last.

As for my second goal, learning more about my father’s professional life—I never paid much attention to what he did for a living when I was growing up. I knew that he was a writer, but I never knew what he wrote specifically. First and foremost, he was my dad. Through writing this book, I learned to appreciate him in new, more mature ways. I was impressed by the courage and stamina he showed in the struggles he experienced with censors and sponsors. I also discovered the plethora of writing he did during World War II and through his years at Antioch College. Although my dad said in his final interview that he felt his writing was “momentarily adequate,” he was mistaken. I hear from countless people how his works influenced them—as writers or in their day-to-day lives—how they miss him, his messages, his humanity.

As to my third goal, have I dispelled erroneous characterizations of my dad? Reading through the many letters and comments I’ve received, I would say unequivocally yes. People have said that they feel like they know my dad now, beyond the television image and way beyond what they may have read before. I was particularly moved and gratified by the following words from what one reviewer wrote: “As I Knew Him is the biography that has, finally, done the man justice.”

Matheson and I were going to fly to San Francisco. It was like three or four weeks after the show was on the air, and I had spent weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardess close the curtains when he sat down, and I was going to say, “Dick, open it up.” I had this huge blown-up poster stuck on the outside of the window so that when he opened it there would be this gremlin staring at him. So what happened was we get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed, I lean over and say, “Dick”—at which point they start the engines and it blows the thing away. It was an old prop airplane. He never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this.

We bought a house on Long Lane in Finneytown next to your parents. A couple of days after we moved in your dad greeted me as I drove in from work. He asked me what I did, I said I was a salesman for IBM and I asked what he did. He replied, “I write.” I said, “That’s nice, I read.” And thus began a long friendship . . .

After your father submitted a script, he was most anxious to see if it was accepted and couldn’t stand it when he thought a reply was imminent. He would get into his red and black car (which I teased him by calling it an upside down bathtub) and go in search of the postman. He just couldn’t wait for normal delivery.... Then there was the time your dad bought a new electric lawn mower. I sat out on our back patio and watched him cut the backyard. He would go around in circles and every time he came to the electric cord he had to stop and lift it over the mower. After several circles, pauses to lift the cord, and restarts, I called him over and suggested that he go back and forth, and the cord would follow him. He was delighted with my suggestion and acted like I had made a great invention.... Your dad could not stand it when we had visitors, he just had to know who was there. He would come over with some pretext or other, and when he left he walked past our large picture window and slowly disappeared out sight as if he were going down a stairway. What a comedian.... We all got excited when one of your dad’s scripts was scheduled to be on television. When the great night arrived I would call your parents to see if they wanted to watch the show on “big-screen.” We owned a 13-inch TV versus your parents’ 12-inch. Your dad could tell if it was any good or not by whether my wife would stay awake! . . . Your father was a sun worshiper, sat in his lawn chair in the front yard waiting for the children to come home from school. They loved your father, and every time he got a gathering he would proceed to tell them a story that he made up as he went along. What a fertile imagination.