Famous Veterans Celebrating Birthdays Today (July 27th):

Famous Veterans Born July 27, 1940:

Gary Kurtz – Film Producer: Star Wars – (Marine Corps 1966-1969)

Famous Veterans Born July 27, 1931:

Jerry Van Dyke – Actor and Comedian (younger brother of Dick Van Dyke) – (United States Air Force Tops In Blue in 1954 and 1955) – Died: January 5, 2018

Famous Veterans Born July 27, 1922:

Norman Lear – Screenwriter/Producer (All in the Family, Maude, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons and Good Times.

Lear enlisted in the United States Army in September 1942. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; he talked about bombing Germany in the European theater. Lear flew 52 combat missions and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army in 1945, and his fellow World War II crew members are featured in the books Crew Umbriago, by Daniel P. Carroll (tail gunner), and 772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men, The Memories, by Turner Publishing and Co.

Norman Lear passed away on December 5th, 2023 at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 101.