Robert J. Serling, Aviation Writer, Dies at 92 (original) (raw)

May 18, 2010

Robert J. Serling, an aviation writer known for the best-selling novel “The President’s Plane Is Missing,” died on May 6 in Tucson, Ariz. He was 92 and a longtime Tucson resident.

His daughter, Jennifer Serling, confirmed the death.

Published by Doubleday in 1967, Mr. Serling’s novel concerns the predicament in which the vice president finds himself after Air Force One disappears. The book spent 21 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was made into a 1973 TV movie starring Buddy Ebsen.

Jerome Robert Serling was born on March 28, 1918, in Cortland, N.Y., and reared in Binghamton, N.Y. (He deplored the name Jerome and switched his first and middle names as a young man, his daughter said.)

As a youth, Mr. Serling acted out plays in the family backyard with his younger brother, Rod, who would grow up to create the television series “The Twilight Zone.” As an adult, Robert Serling was a technical adviser on “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” an episode of “The Twilight Zone” that centers on a commercial airliner that hurtles mysteriously back through time.

Robert Serling earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Antioch College in Ohio in 1942. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces as an aircraft-identification instructor.

After the war, Mr. Serling joined United Press International. As a reporter based in Washington, he covered air crashes and the Washington Redskins. Mr. Serling was later aviation editor at U.P.I. and the manager of its radio news division.

Mr. Serling’s first marriage, to Patricia Huntley, ended in divorce. His second wife, Priscilla Arone, whom he married in 1968, died in 2000. Besides his daughter, Jennifer, from his marriage to Ms. Arone, he is survived by a son, Jeffrey, also from his second marriage; his third wife, Patricia Hoyer; and four grandchildren. Rod Serling died in 1975, at 50.

With the success of “The President’s Plane Is Missing,” Mr. Serling left U.P.I. to write books full time. His other novels include “She’ll Never Get Off the Ground” (Doubleday, 1971); “Air Force One Is Haunted” (St. Martin’s, 1985); and “Something’s Alive on the Titanic” (St. Martin’s, 1990).

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