As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling

JODI AND I ARE aware of my father’s growing celebrity, but fame back then is not the madness of today. There are no paparazzi, no blinding cameras flashing inches from your face. It is not the mayhem, the pandemonium, or the complete and disrespectful lack of privacy that exists now.

When we are out with my dad, someone passing on the street or someone in a store often recognizes him and stops and stares. They are usually polite; even in groups they are not a frenzied mob. Still, at times we hate this and will tug on his hand. We don’t want anyone taking him away, even for a few moments. Frequently he is asked for his autograph. He is always cordial and gracious and obliging.

I remember a nervous fan who gets the wording wrong and exuberantly declares to my father, “Hey! You’re my best fan!” My dad gets a kick out of this, and I remember him chuckling as we walk away.

Every year, from the time I am six until I am about twelve, my dad takes me to Disneyland for my birthday.

I look forward to these trips to Disneyland and having my dad all to myself. Much advance planning goes into these excursions. My dad and I decide where we will stay overnight, the precise time he will pick me up at school, where I should wait for him, what we should take, and so on. That he is as excited as I am is clearly evident. There is no pretense, no forced pleasure; these trips unquestionably appeal to the child within him.

Driving on the freeway, we play our usual pre-Disney game. He’ll say, “Okay, Pops, the first one who sees the sign for Disneyland gets to pick the first ride.” My dad never sees it. He must be blind, I think in my young mind.

We always spend the night in a motel close by and get up very early the next morning. We love the Swiss Family Robinson tree house, and the G.E. Carousel of Progress. I clutch his arm when we ride The Matterhorn and we rarely miss the Skyway to Tomorrowland. My father loves the Pirates of the Caribbean and always comments on the attention to detail, such as the hair on the pirates’ legs.

Every year, he stands patiently beside me in the mile-long line to ride in the electric cars. For years I hope I’ll reach the height requirement to drive, but I never do.

We generally leave the park in the late afternoon, exiting the gates tired but content, and back in the car, we manically talk about next year’s trip as my Mickey Mouse balloon bounces from side to side in the backseat.

As we drive up the freeway on our way back home, it is not lost on me that I am fortunate to be able to go to places like Disneyland. To punctuate this fact, every year at Christmastime my mother has my sister and me read “The Hundred Neediest Cases” in The New York Times, and we decide which family we want to help.

For many years, my parents have foster children in Korea and the Philippines, and they visit them on several occasions. Often Jodi and I write the monthly letters to them and send drawings.

In 1962, my father writes to Pan-Ki, a child in Korea.

We understand that we are to be your Foster Parents, for a time, and we wanted you to know that we have received your picture and were just delighted that we have taken on responsibility for such a fine looking man.

Here in the United States, I am a television writer and I’ve been wondering if you have television there, or have ever seen it.

I have two little girls and have always wanted a son. I’m hoping that you will write us whenever you can and tell us of your needs and what you’re doing. We are tremendously interested in your welfare, and to that end we’ll do all we can on your behalf. I’d also like to think that though I haven’t any real son, perhaps you will fill the bill for me, and that perhaps someday we could meet.

Be sure to write us when you can.

With Affectionate regards,
Rod Serling

Many years after my dad and I last visited Disneyland together, and years after he died, Disney, in an effort to compete with the free-fall ride at Six Flags Theme Park, has built one of their own in Disney World. After several years of negotiations, the deal is sealed and the ride is completed. It is called “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.”

I accompany my husband Doug and our children Erica and Sam, along with friends, my mother, Jodi, and her son Ryan to the opening ceremonies in Orlando. As we walk through the park, Erica (seven at the time), Sam (four), and Ryan (three), are all skipping around us and pointing at different rides and attractions, having a blast, completely immersed in the magic.

I think my dad would have been stunned that Disney would build a ride based on The Twilight Zone. He could never have imagined so many people waiting in a line for a ride involving him.

It begins with a visit to the lobby of an “abandoned” old Hollywood hotel and then snakes through to the eerie, cobweb-covered library where there is a film with my dad projected on a television screen, made up of hundreds of individual cuts that have been reassembled to have him introduce an attraction designed long after his death. From there visitors make their way into the boiler room in the hotel’s basement, where they board one of the building’s “service elevators.”

According to Disney “lore,” “In 1939, during a gloomy Halloween night, five unlucky souls were riding down the hotel’s maintenance service elevator when a violent storm struck the building . . . and they were never seen again. Black scorch marks still scar The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror façade where lightning left its autograph.”

Once you board the elevator, it rises several floors and opens its doors on surrealistic Twilight Zone–type illusions, then shuts the doors again and hauls you the rest of the way to the top before plunging down again in a seeming free fall.

There is actually little of the true spirit of The Twilight Zone about this attraction, lacking the commentary on the nature of man or imaginative explorations of “other dimensions.” The entire experience, in fact, feels a little strange to me; dropping nearly two hundred feet in a haunted elevator is not exactly my cup of tea, and I am glad my kids are too young to ride it. But I think my dad, a former paratrooper, would have loved the ride.

Someone who apparently had been considered to do the fill-in portions of the voice-over is at the opening ceremony and follows us around the park, pretending to be my father. It is creepy, not to mention offensive, and I finally have to ask him to stop.

The next day, our last day, we go back to the other “Lands” with the tamer, more manageable rides—and where no one is following us: ”The Carousel of Progress,” “It’s a Small World,” “The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House,” and other rides that have been updated from what I remembered.

When we pack up and head back to the airport for home, we hear our kids in the backseat: “That was fun!” “What was your favorite ride?” Erica asks Sam, and together, excitedly they say, “Mom, can we go again next year? Please! Please!” I turn to my husband, Doug, and smile, and for just a moment I’m back in time and I hear my own voice and my father answering.