Born Nov. 5, 1943 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois (crystal Lake Lake Michigan) as Samuel Shepard Rogers III. Nicknamed "Steve", son of Samuel Shepard Rogers, 2/3/17, (Lake Crystal, Illinois) and Jane Elaine Schook, 7/16/17, (Lombard, Illinois).
His family had roots in Ill. His greatgrandfather S. S. Rogers IV had been an editor on the Chicago Daily News, whose son maried Helen Dodge, granddaughter of Civil War hero Lemuel P. Dodge in Crystal Lake 50 miles outside of Chicago.
His father moves to different bases, S. Dakota, Utah, Florida eventually to Guam. In 1945 his father returns from the war "severly disturbed".
Two younger sisters, (Deedee) Roxanne and Sandy are born around this time.
1945 His father gets out of the army and goes to live in S. Pasadena, Calif., a white suburb east of LA, with Mrs. Rogers sister.
Sam goes to Lincoln Elementary School. As a 7 year old writes a story about two orphans, "The Finding of Fang".
His favorite movies are by John Huston, "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" and "King Solomon's Mines".
Brought up Episcopalian.
There is a story of him as a ten year old stealing a bicycle and riding near the Arroyo. His family did not own a TV because his father said they did not need one.
His father goes to night school to finish a degree, while his mother works as a teacher.
"I couldn't stand it the whole idea of writing in notebooks.. ."
Starts school in Pasadena but around 12 moves to Duarte 15 miles to the east.
1956 Goes to high school at Duarte (lower on the social scale) a few miles east of Pasadena, living on an avocado ranch with horses and chickens, hand-made irrigation and driving a tractor for citrus grove.
Duarte was dominated by rock quarries, cement companies and the City of Hope Medical Center.
Concept of the rich and poor and being born
on the wrong side of the tracks.
On notebooks: "Shepard became known for his omnipresent notebook
in which he made frequent notes, so much so that his playwriting
class presented him with a carton full of shirt-sized writing
pads.
The "accidentalness" of towns like
Azuza and Duarte
Listening to Dixieland drums and getting better at playing than
his father on his great rameo
Shep does not recall high school years too
fondly and he preferred exploring the local foothills or playing
drums to attending school
Track team with erratic performance on Benzedrine.
Close to his grandparents.
Charles Mingus III is also from Duarte. "An incorporated city with the gentry from Monrovia...a lot of WW II vets in the foothills screaming their guts out for morphine". Shep unable to take father's "drinking bouts and military discipline"
Shep and Mingus met in Hs over a fistfight. Mingus grew up as a misplaced kid, a black kid in a white suburb and a jazzman's son in the land of the Beach Boys.
1961 Graduated and enrolled in Mt. San Antonia Jr. College as an agricultural science major..."still an outsider". Story of Shep as vet raising sheep or German Shepards or going to the Yukon.
Acts in Harvey at Mt. SAC in Skin of Our Teeth he recruits Mingus to play the black charcter.
First car: $300.00 for a 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe.
Shep Comment on Waiting for Godot and beatniks.
1961-1963 Attempted poetry and poor Tennesee Williams imitation for the MoSAiC literary magazine about a girl who is raped and then taunted by her stepfather.
Auditions for the Bishop's Company. Mingus remembers seeing him in an all-black restaurant on Rt. 66 and Shep asks him to audition for the Skin of Our Teeth .
Mingus recalls that Skin was a racist grade B mentality where he has to push a boardwalk chair across the stage...He throws it into the front row and yells Nazi...Remembers Shep as violent too. he thought that Mingus's fear, clinging to a flag pole was great.
Comment on Shep and racism at the integrated Duarte H.S. with a separate white supremacy history class. A biology teacher at Duarte was fired for teaching evolution.
"If it could be smoked, sniffed, swallowed or shot, Shep and Ming tried it once. If they liked it they did it again."
His relatioship with Mingus was a challenge to their notions of not being prejudiced..."Because it is his society, he did get a slant on things which gave him a mythology..."
Mingus "involved in a symbiotic relationship in terms of this racial stuff, in terms of what it is intellectually. The synergy of two opposites."
On touring with the Bishop's Co. Freedom from the confines of home, the nomadic existence "The religious cover was a phoney. We were really a bunch of frustrated actors who couldn't find a niche." Acts in Winnie the Pooh to A Sleep of Prisoners (1951). One night stands in Churches.
Theatre was a way out of town to hit the road and it gave him a chance to change identities.
On the change of his name: Steve Rogers was the name of the original Captain America.
Forward to 1963-1964.
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