On this date in 1945 in San Bruno, California, a newborn baby boy was introduced to the world. His name was Ron McKernan. Some of you may remember that Ron was a member of the band Grateful Dead. Had he not died in 1973 he would be blowing out one more birthday candle today.

Also, it was on this date in 1932 a young lady by the name of Virginia Patterson Hensley was born in Winchester, Virginia. We now know her as Patsy Cline

And of local interest, it was on this date in the year 1900 that Galveston suffered devastating loss of life as a huge hurricane battered the island. This hurricane had no name, as it occurred long before the hurricane naming system that is in place today. However, this nameless killer claimed as many as 8,000 Galvestonians.

And finally...

Our story starts today with a young man named Eugene Wesley. He was born in El Paso, Texas on August 19th, 1921. Not long after his birth, the family moved to Los Angeles, so that his father, also named Eugene, could fulfill his dream of working with the LAPD. After the younger Eugene completed high school, inspired by his fathers career, he went on to enroll for three years at the Los Angeles City College to study policemanship.

Young Eugene later grew an interest in flight, so he enrolled in aeronautical engineering classes. During this time he also earned his pilots license. Not long afterwards, in the year 1941, he would join the U.S. Army Air Corps. He flew several B-17 sorties during World War II in the Pacific Theatre and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross as well as the Air Medal.

When his military days were over, Eugene would become a commercial pilot for Pan American World Airways, which would later become known as Pan Am.

During one of his flights to Calcutta, India, his plane caught fire and crash-landed in the Syrian Desert near the Euphrates River. He was the senior surviving crew member and his rescue efforts and leadership during and after that crash saved several lives and earned him a commendation by the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

When he wasn’t flying, he enrolled in literature classes at Columbia University. This was not just a passing interest, as he had been selling bits and pieces of his writings to various newspapers and magazines throughout his college and military years.

He would later leave Pan Am to try to pursue a full-time writing career for the brand new medium of television. In the year 1949, while trying to get his writing career jump-started, he would follow his fathers footsteps and join the LAPD. He served for 7 years.

Eugene Wesley’s writing career would eventually start to earn big dividends as he wrote scripts for several television series’ of the 1950’s and he produced several more. Some of the TV shows were: “Have Gun, Will Travel”, “Four Star Theatre”, “Dragnet”, “The Lieutenant” and many others.

One of the shows that he created was developed in an effort to rival the fame of “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon”, two very big ratings earners of the time. After showing his pilot episode to some of the top dogs at NBC, they weren’t quite convinced that the show was ready for primetime. NBC nearly gave up on him and his new television program. Eugene begged for one last shot. Eventually, NBC told him to make an unprecedented second pilot episode and try again. After watching it, NBC decided that perhapsit was worth a try and they put it on their primetime broadcast schedule. However, the show was broadcast for only three years, until eventually it was cancelled due to poor ratings.

Eugene was a decorated War veteran, a heroic commercial airline pilot, an honorable police officer for the LAPD. Yet, he gave up all of that to become a television writer and now NBC tells him that the show that he put hours, months and years of hard work into was now cancelled. What a tough-luck story for poor Eugene Wesley. Yes, yet another sad story of a dream career that “almost” made it to the big leagues.

Now wait a minute, here. Let me back up the story just a little bit. What I forgot to tell you was that Eugene Wesley is not the man’s full name. Wesley, you see, is his middle name. His full name is Eugene Wesley Roddenberry. We know him as Gene Roddenberry and his television show, of course, was Star Trek. Yes, it was originally only broadcast for 3 years, but how many times have we seen an episode of Star Trek in syndication during the 40+ years since it was first shown on this date, September 8th, in the year 1966.

…And that is just one of the things that has happened on this day in history.