was born on this date in 1925. As they so often do, The Writer’s Almanac has a nice, succinct essay:
It’s the birthday of humorist Jean Shepherd, born in Chicago, Illinois (1925). He’s remembered for the autobiographical stories he told on the radio about a boy named Ralph Parker growing up in Hohman, Indiana. One of his stories was made into the movie A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated. It’s about a boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas, even though every adult in his life says that he’ll shoot his eye out. The stories Shepherd told on-air were always improvised, but he later wrote them down and published them in collections like In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (1967) and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters (1972).
Shepherd said, “Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man.”