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Norman Lear was the television producer of such groundbreaking sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. He received four Emmy awards, a Peabody, and the National Medal of Arts. As an advocate, Lear founded People For the American Way and supported First Amendment rights and other progressive causes. He died in 2023.

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WHEN I WAS A BOY I thought that if I could turn a screw in my father’s head just a sixteenth of an inch one way or the other, it might help him to tell the difference between right and wrong. I couldn’t, of course, and ultimately he—and I—had to pay a serious price for his confusion.

In late June of 1931, just out of third grade and a month away from turning nine, I was eagerly looking forward to my first experience at summer camp. A roll of cloth tape imprinted with “Norman M. Lear, Norman M. Lear, Norman M. Lear . . .” sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for my mother to cut it up and sew my name into the clothes I’d be taking with me in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, my father was about to take a plane to Tulsa. None of my friends in Chelsea, Massachusetts, knew anybody who had ever flown anywhere. It had been only four years since Charles Lindbergh flew thirty-three and a half hours in his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis to get from New York to Paris, and the rare plane that was spotted in the sky had us kids chasing around in the street yelling, “Lindy, Lindy!” So Dad flying to Oklahoma was a big deal.

He was traveling on some kind of business—“Monkey business!” said my mother, who sensed that the men he’d fallen in with were not to be trusted—and for my upcoming birthday he was going to bring me back a ten-gallon hat just like the one worn by my favorite film cowboy, Ken Maynard.

“Herman, I don’t like this,” she told him. “I don’t want you to see those men.” But Herman, as always, knew better.

“Jeanette!” he screamed, the veins in his neck bulging as he stood over her with his nose all but pressing hers. “Stifle!” And off he went.