While much of television's history is filled with banality, writer/producer Norman Lear (born 1922) is credited with enlarging the scope of the medium. With such groundbreaking television series as All in the Family, Maude, and Sanford and Son to his credit, Lear helped usher in an age of enlightenment in American entertainment, where sensitive social and political issues could be discussed without awkwardness.

Norman Milton Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut on July 27, 1922. His father Herman was a securities broker; mother Jeanette was a homemaker. Lear attended Boston's Emerson College, but dropped out in September 1942 to join the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Writing a war memoir for People magazine in 1995, Lear, an avowed pacifist, admitted he "just had to get into it. I was Jewish and I wanted to kill Germans." Lear received a Decorated Air Medal for his wartime accomplishments. Upon leaving...