An Ohio Historical Marker will be placed on the campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs to honor Rod Serling, an American author, screenwriter and Emmy award-winning television producer.
Serling was a graduate of the college, and to find out more about it, we spoke with Antioch Archivist Scott Sanders about the upcoming marker dedication in October.
This interview transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sanders: I was contacted by representatives of the Ohioana Library, and so that's an organization associated with the State Library of Ohio and the Historical Society that honors and exalts Ohio writers. They have a quarterly publication, and they are also the, I'll call it the sponsoring agency of an effort to get state historic markers up to Ohio writers.
And so, I sort of didn't think of Rod Serling as an Ohio writer, given he made his fame in New York with Twilight Zone, but unquestionably he wrote in Ohio. And so they approached us with, would we like a historic marker to Rod Serling as part of the Ohioana literary trail? Sure.
So, the 'how do we do that' is we assemble a team of historians and writers and people in the organization there and we write an application.
And it was really some neat people I worked with, including Rod's daughter, Anne, and who wrote a book about him, and Mark Dawidziak, who is one of the leading Serling scholars out there. And no surprise, in my position, I've gotten to meet a bunch of those people. An endless string, really, of Serling enthusiasts who wish to write about him.
One of the things that I recall from that effort was how difficult it was to pass because it was very specific about the information that we'd had to provide. I had to get things from a number of different resources and had to cite them as if I was, what I kept saying was these people are tougher than my thesis committee. But we got it.
Kenney: So they approached you and you still had to make the case.
Sanders: That's right, with a lot of help from them. I mean, they're excellent writers, they know the stuff, but I've got the material that goes with, call it a packet, you that's submitted, plus, if we're going to put one of these markers on Antioch College property we probably should have somebody from Antioch College in on the effort.
Kenney: Maybe for people who aren't familiar with Rod Serling's history with Antioch in Ohio, can you give us a brief review of that?
Sanders: Absolutely. Rod Serling came to Antioch in 1946 after mustering out of the military in World War II. He followed his brother here actually. A lot of people don't realize Bob Serling was class of '42. And so there was a familial connection to the school. He's supposed to have visited his brother when he was a student. I don't have any evidence of that, but I've heard that.
And Serling went to college on the GI Bill like so many veterans did. I figured he picked Antioch because of his brother, but I'm not sure why in the end. He really flourished here as a student. Maybe you know he came here as a physical education major. He'd been a gold glove boxer when he was younger and was really interested especially in outdoor education, camping, and working with children, but found that writing was something that he could use to cope with the trauma of being a soldier in combat, which he saw quite a bit of in the Philippines.
And so he switched to English literature and cooperative education was a huge component of his education in both regards really because I remember he did co-op jobs and summer camps for differently abled kids and really, really enjoyed it. But then it was jobs in broadcasting and newspaper writing that absolutely lit his fire and gave him some of the early connections in especially Ohio broadcasting, WLW in Cincinnati would be one such place, which is where he got a job after he graduated in 1950.
Of course, the other thing that happened to him when he was not yet in Twilight Zone, when he was at Antioch College, he met the woman who would marry him, Carolyn Kramer. Both of them are class of '50, but they married before they graduated.
Kenney: The marker is scheduled to be mounted or displayed in October. Rod Serling is also getting a tip of the hat, a tribute during the Yellow Springs Film Festival. Are you in on any of that planning?
Sanders: That's right. Only a little bit. We have a panel of experts, including Mark, including Anne, who are going to have a have a panel discussion event in the Foundry Theater and they're going to show a couple of episodes and they'll be brief comments by our president.
Kenney: Yellow Springs Film Festival that runs Oct. 2 through Oct. 5 and the Rod Serling Tribute is part of the opening ceremony, I believe, and let's talk about the plaque dedication.
Sanders: So that'll be that Thursday evening, I think is the 2nd, a Thursday. I think we're looking at 4:00 to 4:30 p.m. as a starting time. We may actually have some twilight by the time we do this. And so when the marker gets here, we're going to erect it by the only discernible landmark from his college career, and that is the first dormitory that he lived in. We call that South Hall. South hasn't been a dorm in a long time, but it was a men's dormitory from its inception until the mid-'60s.
I couldn't think of any other place to put it. You know, he and his wife lived in a trailer park, essentially, that belonged to the college. They called it Splinterville, but it's off the beaten track, and it would be like no good place to see it. WYSO in his day, well, it was called WABS when he managed the college radio.
Again its location would be not a marker that people can actually go up and and visit, and so this will be facing the Horseshoe, which you know a lot of people don't call One Morgan Place, but that's the street at least since 2009 and it'll be easy to pull up and read.
Kenney: So that dedication will kick off the film festival, essentially, taking place just before the Rod Serling Tribute, which will start at 7.30 p.m. at the Foundry Theater. Scott, any final words about what this means for Antioch, for Yellow Springs local residents?
Sanders: Obviously, it's great recognition for us. I mean, he's one of our most famous graduates in terms of social impact. He's one our most important graduates. I mean he created a television show that changed television.
And yeah, for me it's a culmination of so many years of meeting and getting to know these Serling scholars and how significant his work is to them. Most of them aren't from around here, and so it's another example of Antioch College's, you know, outsized reputation. You know, a small place that does big stuff.
Kenney: Scott Sanders, archivist with Antioch College. Thank you so much. We'll have further details on this on our website. We'll post this interview and listeners can check as it gets closer to the film festival. We'll have these dates officially on our web site, wyso.org. Scott, thanks so much for the conversation and great job with helping put all this together.
Sanders: Always a pleasure, Jerry.
