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When Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was born on August 19, 1921 in El Paso, Texas, no one had any idea then that another Texan city would one day become the headquarters to send his ashes into outer space; let alone that his creative dreams would become a major catalyst for the creation of that space program.

Space seemed a long way away from the dreams of the young Gene Roddenberry. After the family moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the Los Angeles police department, Gene naturally started following in his footprints, graduating from Los Angeles City College in police studies; though even then he held a passion for the pulp adventure stories. He went on to further postsecondary studies at the University of Southern Carolina, Columbia, and the University of Miami, also earning a pilot's licence in 1940. However, in university his interest shifted to aeronautical engineering. In 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, Roddenberry enlisted in the United States Army Air Corp, flying a B-17 for the 394th Bomb Squad. By the end of the war he had earned both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. It was during the war that he married his high school girlfriend Eileen Anita Rexroat, a marriage that would produce two daughters (Dawn, Darleen) and last twenty-seven years.

In the years following the war Roddenberry initially became a commercial pilot for Pan American World Airways, which he left shortly after surviving a crash in the Syrian desert. A failed attempt to become a screenwriter translated into a public relations stint as a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, where he would serve until 1956. In addition to writing the usual press releases and speeches, he would also help fellow officers draft their experiences into written outlines that could be submitted to the new television drama "Dragnet". Borrowing copies of the finished scripts from Jack Webb helped Roddenberry to hone his own stage direction and scriptwriting skills. His own writing break finally came with the release of the new television show "Mr. District Attorney" (1954), for which he wrote under the pen name Robert Wesley.

In 1956 Roddenberry again launched himself into full time television writing. His credits during this period of time include "Highway Patrol" (1955), "West Point Story" (1956-58), "Have Gun Will Travel" (1957), "Naked City" (1958-63), "The Detectives" (1959), and "The Lieutenant" (1963-66). "The Lieutenant" was also the first television show Roddenberry

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