American Screenwriter and Producer. Norman Lear was born on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Herman and Jeannette Lear. His father was from Russia, and his mother was from Ukraine. Norman grew up in a Jewish household in Chelsea, Massachusetts. When he was nine years old, his father went to jail for selling fake bonds. Norman attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; he talked about bombing Germany in the European theater. Norman flew 52 combat missions and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. He was discharged from the Army in 1945. After World War II, Norman had a career in public relations. He decided to move to California to have a fresh start. In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer and asked to salvage the new CBS sitcom starring Celeste Holm, "Honestly, Celeste!," but the program was canceled after eight episodes. During this time he became the producer of NBC's short-lived (26 episodes) sitcom The Martha Raye Show, after Nat Hiken left as the series director. Lear also wrote some of the opening monologues for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show which aired from 1956 to 1961. In 1959, Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy, starring Henry Fonda. After starting out as a comedy writer, in 1967, he wrote and produced "Divorce American Style," and "Cold Turkey," both starring Dick Van Dyke. After disappointing ratings on both, Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC. They rejected the show after two pilots were taped: "Justice for All" in 1968 and "Those Were the Days" in 1969. After a third pilot was taped, CBS picked up the show, known as "All in the Family." It premiered January 12, 1971, to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971–72 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years. After falling from the #1 spot, All in the Family still remained in the top ten, well after it became Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based on his own parents, Norman said he thought of his father as a "rascal" as Charlie and his mother as the character of Edith. Lear went on to create and produce many other notable 1970's sitcoms such as "Maude," "Sanford and Son," "One Day at a Time," "The Jeffersons," and "Good Times." He later appeared in "South Park" in the 2003 episode entitled I'm a Little Bit Country, and was spotlighted in the 2016 documentary "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You." In 2014, Lear published Even This I Get to Experience, a memoir. Norman also received a 1977 Lifetime Achievement Award and Humanist Arts Award, 1980 Academy of Achievement Gold Plate Award in 1980, a Television Hall of Fame award in 1984, a National Medal of Arts in 1999 from President Clinton, Britannia Awards Excellence in Television in 2007, a Woody Guthrie Prize, another Lifetime Achievement Award, and was honored at the Kennedy Center of Honors all three in 2017. Norman died in Los Angeles at the impressive age of 101.