STAR TREK Turns 50 Today!

Written Sept. 8, 2016

What a DE-lightful day. Star Trek memes and best wishes are everywhere in social media.

 

There are countless fabulously-creative people in fandom. Someone ought to make an album of the Most Fabulous #StarTrek50th Anniversary memes. I would buy it at warp speed!

 

Like most people, I can’t imagine life without Star Trek. I especially can’t imagine my life without Star Trek, which deposited me  in a world that no fan in their right mind has any right to expect–although lots of fans probably dream of something like it, as I did (literally!) before it all began to take shape in real life…

 

Most of you know the story, if you’ve read my book DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal: A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best or if you’ve seen/heard the interviews on my home page and elsewhere. But I still have to pinch myself sometimes. Did all that really happen?

 

Why yes…yes, it did… I have only to pull out my scrapbooks and four, 3″ three-ring binders of phone logs containing almost 1000 phone calls (99.99% of them Kelley-initiated) to assure myself that yes, it all really happened.

 

Oh…my…gosh…

 

I don’t do it very often (nostalgia can trap me like a fly in amber and keep me from moving on), but this year I have because–well, because Star Trek turns 50 later this evening…

 

I’ve been close to tears several times today as I’ve watched fan-created retrospectives and tributes to the series and to the actors, especially those we’ve lost …  The tears still might happen today: I just hope not, because Star Trek brought me too much JOY to succumb to the transitory, thankfully infrequent, sadness that it also brought to my life…

 

I seriously have no idea if I would even have survived–let alone thrived–without the influence that Star Trek had on my life.

 

As a troubled teenager, Star Trek gave me hope. That spark of hope gave me renewed energy. The renewed energy gave me a hunger to make something noble–or at least honorable–happen wherever and whenever I could.

 

Although I was a shy, quiet kid (by nurture, not nature: I was a Shirley Temple type early on, until my parents shamed me out of it) I had many dreams and goals, many loves and urges.

 

I wanted to help animals, be a cowboy (not a cowgirl), write great stuff, make a real difference!

 

In many ways since then I have contributed–to animals and people, and toward tolerance,  with IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations for you non-Trek fans) as a final destination.

 

A lot of friends pooh pooh Star Trek, considering its ethos pie-in-the-sky “magical thinking”.

 

I just smile…

 

“Magical thinking” (and the elbow grease and legwork that accompanied it)  put me in touch with DeForest Kelley… got me a serval cat to raise… made me an accomplished, self-supporting professional writer… encouraged me to “boldly go” where too few other people tried going, considering the outcomes too fraught with temporary discomfort, poverty or risk for them to engage seriously in the quixotic adventure.

 

“Magical thinking (and the elbow grease and legwork that accompanied it) is what got cavemen and women out of caves… put us on the moon… created the wheel, steam engine, automobiles, airplanes and space shuttles. It’s what will get us out of the messes we make for ourselves tomorrow and the next day.

 

So here’s to magical thinking …

 

Thank you to Gene Roddenberry and to all of you whose love for Star Trek goes beyond the enjoyment of great entertainment. You are the future I want to see! Yours are the hearts I want to touch and be touched by. Yours is the magic I want to witness!

 

Happy Anniversary, Star Trek!

 

Added September 6, 2018: http://www.startrek.com/article/trekking-toward-tolerance