Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, better known as Gene Roddenberry, was born in El Paso, Texas, on August I 9, 1921, in his parents' rented home. Although he didn't live in El Paso long, his legacy remains a part of the community. He is memorialized by many, including El Pasoans who admire him and his creation, Star Trek: The Original Series, the hit television series that arguably started the Hollywood space craze.
Roddenberry was the firstborn child of parents Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline Glen Roddenberry. His father was a native Georgian, but his mother was born and raised in El Paso, where she married Eugene in 1920 after he returned from World War I. Caroline was only 17 when Roddenberry was born, and Eugene worked for modest pay as a lineman for the local electric company. When Roddenberry hit age two, the Roddenberrys moved to Los Angeles after Eugene passed a civil service test, landing a police commission.
Image caption: Gene Roddenberry during his senior year of high school. 1938. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
After high school, Roddenberry spent three years at Los Angeles City College, majoring in police science. While involved in a relationship with Eileen Anita Rexroat, whom he married in 1942, Roddenberry developed an interest in aeronautical engineering while at the college. From that point forward, Roddenberry led a colorful Gene Roddenberry during his senior year of high school, 1939 and adventurous life even before the age of 30. He graduated from the United States Army Air Corps two months after his marriage and was commissioned as a second lieutenant, serving as a decorated World War II pilot. A year later, while flying a plane out of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, he overshot the runway by 500 feet, caroming into trees, killing two men. However, the official report absolved him of any responsibility, prompting him to return to the U.S. to finish his military career.
In the U.S., Roddenberry flew for Pan American World Airways, the country's most important international airline until its bankruptcy in the I 990s. On June 18, 1947, as the Star Trek website recalls:
During a flight from Calcutta his plane lost two engines and caught fire midair, eventually crashing in the middle of the night in the Syrian Desert. Roddenberry sent two Englishmen swimming across the Euphrates River in quest of the source of a light he had observed just prior to the crash. Meanwhile, he parleyed with nomads who had come to loot the dead. The Englishmen reached a Syrian military outpost, which sent a small plane to investigate. Roddenberry returned with the small plane to the outpost, where he broadcast a message that was relayed to Pan Am, which sent a stretcher plane to the rescue.
Roddenberry was awarded a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his audacious actions after the crash.
After returning in the early spring of 1948, Roddenberry decided to revolutionize his life upon seeing a television for the first time, planning to pursue his dream of writing for television. The Star Trek website states that Roddenberry, projecting that television was the wave of the future, figured the new medium would be in dire need of writers. Following his father's footsteps, he joined the police force, soon became a sergeant and spokesperson for the department, and gained valuable experience to help him write. He began writing scripts for television shows, including Goodyear Theater, The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, Four Star Theater, Dragnet, The Jane Wyman Theater, Naked City, and a Western show called Has Gun Will Travel, for which he received his first Emmy. Star Trek followed from 1966 to 1969, the fan favorite Roddenberry is best remembered for.
Roddenberry did not anticipate for Star Trek to become the phenomenon that it did; he planned on quitting writing for television before the show gained popularity. In the 1991 release of The Humanist magazine interview, Roddenberry reveals he didn't know and didn't want to believe that if he didn't create Star Trek, he wouldn't have had another project that meant a lot to him. Roddenberry's dream in making a science fiction show was to share his ideas and beliefs about man and society. He believed that two primary waves were present in America, a wave of intelligence and one of gullibility, to control television and make a mass profit.
During the early days of Star Trek, the show was censored for things like open-mouthed kissing and exposed skin. Roddenberry dealt with these criticisms, frustrated with minor editing issues, such as an exposed navel that got an episode thrown out. It wasn't until Paramount Network proposed the second round of Star Trek after the original 78 episodes that Roddenberry decided not to deal with the stress of censorship received from the network. He told Paramount he wasn't interested in creating a second round. Not until they assured him complete creative control and the opportunity to be his own censor did he decide to allow the series to go on. Roddenberry worked almost every day, twelve hours a day, during the first show's production, creating problems with his family. His relationship with the show was bittersweet, with the show almost resulting in the loss of his family.
Image caption: Gene Roddenberry, third from the right, 1976, with most of the Star Trek cast. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
To this day, Star Trek remains popular. Even those who haven't watched the show have an overall idea of what it is. Roddenberry created the base of what would soon turn into spinoffs, sequels, and movies. He shares that there was still so much to be done with what he created, revealing in the Star Trek Judgment Rites interview, "No, I'm not comfortable with the success of the show. It makes me nervous . .. we've got to build on that and make it better." Roddenberry wrote the show with optimistic and prescient views in mind, using the series to say all that he believed. In the video The Words of Gene Roddenberry, he eloquently says, "Star Trek was an attempt to say humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins, not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in lifeforrns." He elaborates, "Diversity contains as many treasures as those waiting for us on other worlds. We will find it impossible to fear diversity and to enter the future at the same time." Much of this stems from his atheistic views and belief that religion is compulsory, ideas that frequently found their way into Star Trek.
His father, Eugene, was a "bigoted Texan," according to 1997's Inside the Star Trek: The Real Story. "At home, Eugene was given to spouting racial epithets," Roddenberry biographer David Alexander notes. "Much of the Star Trek philosophy (Roddenberry] developed later in life was in reaction to his father's prejudices." Texas Monthly reports that "Star Trek offered a progressive utopia, one that had evolved beyond racial divisions. Diversity and inclusivity became pillars of the franchise - a complete rejection of Eugene's 'bigoted Texan' world view."
Many people have become obsessed with Star Trek; they have been described as super fans, referring to themselves as Trekkies or Trekkers and caring deeply about the show. Roddenberry argues the fans played a significant role in the show's survival. In the 1995 Star Trek Judgment Rites interview, he explains that they kept the show alive through their clubs and conventions simply because they loved it. Roddenberry inspired people everywhere to believe beyond that final frontier.
While Roddenberry held inclusive views, he had another side to him. During his time with the Los Angeles Police Department, he had several affairs with secretarial staff while married to Eileen Rexroat. Before Star Trek, Roddenberry had an affair with actress, singer, and model Nichelle Nichols and actress and model Majel Barrett. In her autobiography, Beyond Uhura, Nichols claims that Roddenberry wanted an open relationship with both women simultaneously. However, Nichols ended the affair, not wanting to be "the other woman to the other woman." Soon after, Roddenberry, divorced from Rexroat, married Barrell, and Nichols was eventually cast as Lieutenant Uhura. Roddenberry remained married to Barrett until he died in 1991 while maintaining an extramarital affair with his executive assistant.
Aside from the affairs, Roddenberry seemed to hold an offensive attitude toward sex and women, possibly shedding light on why Roddenberry's success dwindled after Star Trek. The Looper website slates he was frequently dismissed in later Star Trek productions. Looper also states, "The original series is notorious for its female costuming - women on the Enterprise generally wore extremely short mini-skirts - and Roddenberry demonstrated similar tendencies throughout his career.''
Image caption: Star Trek artwork, including creator Gene Roddenberry. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
According to co-producer Morris Chapnick, Roddenberry's script for Tarzan, a character Roddenberry enjoyed since childhood, contained natives sacrificing beautiful, semi-naked women. "I'm sure this had to be Gene's thing - they would all be in individual cages. Gene's fantasy, I guess," Chapnick says. In the end, the Tarzan film never reached production.
Roddenberry insisted on nude scenes for the female actors in Pretty Maids All in a Row, considered a sexploitation film. For publicity, they were also to do a spread in Playboy. The Looper website reports that according to writer Harold Livingston, in 1974 a commissioned script called The Nine became autobiographical. Livingston says, "He (Roddenberry I was also writing his various sexual perversions." In 1977, Roddenberry's draft for the first Star Trek movie was tainted with the line "Have you ever sexed with a human?"
According to The National Review, in "The Great Boor of the Galaxy," Ande Richardson, assistant to Gene L. Coon. American screenwriter, television producer, and novelist, says, "Gene Roddenberry was a sexist, manipulative person who disregarded women." Richardson, who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, further comments, "He [Roddenberry] would have women walking from Bill Theiss' filling rooms through to his office in the skimpiest outfits so he could perv them." This is only one of several examples Richardson points out.
Despite his heavily criticized sexist behavior, Roddenberry received many honors and awards for the series. Star Trek holds the Guinness World Record for the most successful television science-fiction franchise. Roddenberry won the Executive 
Achievement award in 1977 and the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films Life Career award in 1980. Star Trek received an Emmy, and Roddenberry was inducted into the Hall of Fame after his death. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1985, was honored for outstanding science fiction writing, and won an international Hugo award for it. When Roddenberry passed, he was inducted into several halls of fame, including the International Space Hall of Fame, where he was honored for the "out-of-this-world" ideas he brought to life. Fittingly, Roddenberry's ashes were sent out into the galaxy. In 1992, the first-ever public memorial space flight service was conducted. Roddenberry joined 23 others resting in space, launched aboard the Celestis Founders Flight. His widow, Majel Roddenberry, set up this mission, hoping to achieve Roddenberry's dream of traveling through space. It was evident to the family that Roddenberry was otherworldly; there would have never been a better way to honor this unique soul.
Image caption: Gene Roddenberry appearing for an advertisement in MONY, 1961
Today, Roddenberry and the Star Trek Franchise remain treasured. In 2001, the El Paso lndependent School District (EPISD), the largest school district in El Paso, memorialized his name by renaming its planetarium the Gene Roddenberry Planetarium. The director of instructional services at EPISD randomly told the director of the planetarium one day that the creator of Star Trek was born in El Paso, and the planetarium director was shocked. Right away, the directors reached out to the Paramount network and Roddenberry's widow, and reached out to Rod Roddenberry Jr., who loved the idea of renaming the planetarium. During a Huffington Post interview, Rod Roddenberry Jr. explains that it wasn't until his father passed away that he began taking a deeper look at the show and developed a different understanding and appreciation of it. "Someone went up on stage and read a letter from a fan that talked about how Star Trek had really changed their life. And it was at that moment that I was shocked. I said, 'My father? Star Trek ? What's this all about?"'
After renaming the planetarium, Star Trek clubs and conventions sprouted up around El Paso. One convention in the Basset Place Shopping Center became so crowded that the convention told the attendees to be cautious and avoid trampling and crushing each other. The second convention in El Paso, called Great Bird of the Galaxy, was attended by most of the original cast, including William Shatner, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan. The convention, according to Texas Monthly, "went a little too big and went into the red" and was the last Star Trek convention in El Paso.
El Pasoans honor the creator of something tremendous and celebrate that such a writer was born in the beloved border city. Former El Paso City Council Representative Anthony Cobos, out of his campaign funds, paid to lay a plaque at 1907 E. Yandell Drive, where the Roddenberry family rented a house, "a tiny home, two bedrooms, red brick." As he told the El Paso Times, Cobos wanted El Paso to "become a big Trekkie town."
So, the question stands: ls Roddenberry a Texan, and perhaps, more specifically, is he an El Pasoan? It may not matter. Maybe no one cares. 
The answer, however, is addressed in the Texas Monthly article "Was Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry Really a Texan?" You can read the answer for yourself, but however you want to think of him, Roddenberry lived a successful life that changed the world for many people, including himself. Besides his most incredible known creation, he was a longtime civil servant and served his country well. He fathered three children and was a beloved crewmate, creator, writer, and friend. May his accomplishments always be remembered as outstanding and "out of this world." Gene Roddenberry used what he could to share his beliefs and spread the message of diversity and that there is hope that one day we will all get along. Indeed!
Image caption: Gene Roddenberry's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
In Gene Roddenberry's own words: In a very real sense, we are all aliens on a strange planet. We spend most of our lives trying to reach out and communicate. If during our lifetime we could reach out and really communicate with just two people, we are indeed very fortunate. Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow - it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.
