Ray Bradbury - Los Angeles, CA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

I bought my first Ray Bradbury book (“R is for Rocket”) at a book fair in elementary school, wrote a high school book report on Bradbury’s autobiographical “Dandelion Wine,” and my favorite episode of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ was “The Jar,” based on a short story by Bradbury. So, I was glad I got an opportunity to pay my respects to the prolific author during a recent trip to California.

Ray Bradbury was born and spent his early years in Waukegan Illinois (except for a couple of years in Tucson, AZ) but eventually moved with his family to Los Angeles where he finished high school. Being from a poor family, he was unable to attend college, which he might have considered a good thing, as he once said “[college is] a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don't.” Bradbury was a voracious reader, spending a lot of time in libraries: initially concentrating on the great science fiction writers of the day but eventually branching out to other genres including Alexander Pope and John Donne.

By the early 1940s, Ray Bradbury had become an established writer producing short stories published in various magazines. His first collection of short stories “Dark Carnival” was published in 1947. In a career that spanned almost 70 years, Bradbury produced almost 30 novels and book-length collections of short stories which have sold more than 8 million copies all over the world. Most notable among these are “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and “The Illustrated Man.” Many of these stories have been adapted to television (episodes of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents,’ and ‘The Ray Bradbury Theater’) and also to the big screen.

For someone who often wrote of space travel, rockets to Mars, time machines and other far-reaching fantasy, Ray Bradbury never learned to drive a car and lived in the same house for over fifty years surrounded by a lifetime of accumulated clutter. His grandchildren claimed he had more toys than they did. In 2012, Bradbury died at the age of 91. He is buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles alongside his wife of 56 years, Marguerite.
(Source: wikipedia.org, nytimes.com)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 08/22/1920 Date of death: 06/05/2012 Area of notoriety: Literature Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: none Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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