Friday, May 7, 2010

ROBERT J. SERLING

This is too weird.

Two days ago I was thinking of Robert Serling -- brother of Twilight Zone creator Rod -- and the fact that he was a noted aviation writer. What got me on this was an article I read about Rod Serling's death after open heart surgery where Robert was told by the chief surgeon that his brother had the arteries of a 90 year-old man and that the replacement artery (drawn from his leg) was literally falling apart in the surgeon's hands.

Rod Serling died at 50. Much too young.

What was not lost on me was the fact that Robert was still alive after all these years; avoiding the heart disease that Rod had suffered (due to his addiction to cigarettes).

A few minutes ago I was on Wikipedia where I was reading up on PBS's American Masters series, which Rod Serling was the subject of back in the mid 1990's.

I clicked on "Robert J. Serling" to read up on him and noticed that he had a date-of-death entry: May 6th, 2010. "What? That was... yesterday."

He lived to 92.


Wikipedia article on Robert J. Serling...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Serling

4 comments:

Greg Woods said...

It's Barry Morse Syndrome once again

Barry Smight said...

I was going to joke about that, specifically, in the article.

jenserling@aol.com said...

This is Bob's daughter Jennifer. I came across your blog after googling Dad's name. Dad passed away yesterday after a brief battle with cancer. My brother, stepmom and myself were at his side.
Thank you for your interest in Dad. It always made his day to know he had fans of both himself and Rod.
Sincerely
Jennifer Serling

Barry Smight said...

Thank you, Jennifer. I'm an aviation nut and was well aware of your dad and his respect in the aviation writing community. I will make a point to look-up his work.

Thanks again.