It wasn’t long before I realized that Ray Bradbury was the spiritual nucleus of this spectacular realm of fantasy, fear and imagination. Published the year I was born, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES became my favorite book, and Ray and his works became – and always will remain -- my central inspiration.

Some twenty years later, I found myself seated at the right hand of Ray himself during a life-altering breakfast at Forry’s FAMOUS MONSTERS fan convention in Virginia in 1993 – a once-in-a-lifetime gathering hailed as the “Woodstock of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror.” Ray and I talked for two hours that morning about our shared passions and interests, from dinosaurs and Lon Chaney and Laurel and Hardy and Looney Tunes to carnival sideshows and black cats and Edgar Rice Burroughs and Kong and the evocative art of John Singer Sargent and Gustave Dore. Most of all we talked about our mad love of movies and our deep devotion to live theatre, and of course we talked about the subject closest to Ray’s heart, the future – in this case, my future. “Love what you do and do what you love,” he demanded that day. “If anyone else says it can’t be done, tell them, ‘I wish you well, but stay the hell out of my way.’ ”

A week after that convention, I wrote a long, loving letter to Ray, thanking him for granting me a one-time, one-on-one audience with my idol. Miraculously, Ray wrote back, just as effusively as I had written him. I wrote again, and again he wrote back. In time he began calling me directly at my home and office, leaving long, lovely voicemail messages that always ended with, “Call me and we’ll talk about the future.” That fateful breakfast in Virginia launched not only a long and beautiful friendship, but an invigorating creative partnership. Ray became my mentor, my teacher, my collaborator, and my champion. Over the next few years, at his insistence, I followed him to conventions and college lectures in Birmingham, Atlanta, Akron, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles. Over the years I interviewed him countless times for magazines like CULT MOVIES and, most recently, MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT as well as newspaper articles distributed worldwide by the New York Times News Service and the Associated Press. Whether in person or over the phone, our conversations always gravitated toward live theatre – which Ray called his first and best love – and his heartfelt hope that I would produce his cherished stage plays for audiences in the Southeast.

In May 2000, while Ray was still recovering from a terrifying stroke, my theatre friends and I staged seven of his hand-picked plays under the umbrella title THE WORLD OF RAY BRADBURY at one of our theatres in Alabama. Ray was there, in person, right up front, beaming like a six-year-old boy on Christmas morning and crying like a baby through every moment of every play. At intermission he told me, “It’s beautiful – I feel like my whole life is flashing before my eyes!” Needless to say, that unforgettable experience remains one of the most deeply rewarding nights of my life. Soon afterward, Ray and I formed our own vagabond theatre troupe, Pillar of Fire. Envisioned as a Southeastern outpost of Ray’s L.A.-based Pandemonium Theatre Co., Pillar of Fire has produced several other one-act collections – THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES, THE MACHINERIES OF JOY and THE OCTOBER COUNTRY – plus the full-length plays SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, LEVIATHAN 99 and, most recently, FALLING UPWARD – the joyous Irish comedy that ranks with another uplifting and outrageously funny Bradbury favorite, THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT, as Ray’s theatrical masterworks.

In 2003, Ray awarded me with a special Bradbury Badge of Honor when the one-act stage script I adapted from his chilling tale of terror, “The Jar,” was performed alongside two of Ray’s own eerie stage scripts in Pandemonium’s award-winning production of THE OCTOBER COUNTRY at L.A.’s Theatre West. The next year, Ray honored me with another professional prize when he allowed me to edit and publish his essay “All’s Well That Ends Well,” a witty and imaginative piece in which Ray proposed stronger, better endings for such high-profile Hollywood films as SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, ROSEMARY’S BABY and NETWORK. Later that year, I worked even more closely with Ray as I completed my master’s thesis on his stage work, titled WATER INTO WINE: RAY BRADBURY AND THE THEATRE OF WONDER. Ray explained that he started writing plays because he grew weary and frustrated over the prevalence of cold, stark realism on the American stage. He wanted to restore poetic language and magical metaphors to live theatre. “Let me put it this way,” he told me. “When a character in one of Arthur Miller’s plays goes to the kitchen sink and turns on the faucet, water comes out. When a character goes to the kitchen sink and turns on the faucet in one of my plays, wine comes out. That’s the difference, you see. Real life gives us ordinary water, when what we need from theatre is wine. Then we pay attention.” As a playwright, Ray again proved to be a master magician.

Along with our invigorating professional collaborations, I equally cherish the free-spirited, frequently funny personal adventures Ray and I shared over the years. On the way back to his house one night after dinner and a particularly rousing performance of one of his Pandemonium productions, Ray was still pumped up with adrenaline and mischief. He said, “It’s too early to go home – what shall we do now?” I said, “That’s up to you, Ray.” So he said, “Well, we could always drive by the Unitarian Church and yell, ‘God!’ ” When curtain call arrived for that remarkable WORLD OF RAY BRADBURY production I mentioned earlier, I grabbed the handles of Ray’s wheelchair, rocketed our playwright up the aisle, out of the theatre, through the front lobby and into the backstage area at breakneck pace. In less than a minute we arrived onstage – materializing downstage center, facing a standing ovation in front of our assembled cast – at the very instant the curtain reopened for the final triumphant encore. Ray proclaimed that thrilling journey “Our BEN-HUR Chariot Race” – and he loved every exhilarating minute of it.

I especially treasure our sacred pilgrimages to the Music Box Steps in Silverlake, where Stan and Ollie hauled that upright piano up a steep flight of 131 stairs on their way to both an Academy Award and movie-comedy immortality. At dinner after one of those trips, Ray’s eyes filled with tears as he said, “Don’t you hope that wherever they are tonight, Laurel and Hardy know how much we love them?” Again, in Ray’s world, “Love is the answer to everything.”

Then there were all those wild Tinseltown trips to the Hollywood Collectors Shows, where Ray would work the room on his walker, or in his wheelchair, and greet and embrace everyone from Richard Chamberlain and Rod McKuen to Don Knotts and Kevin McCarthy. His appearances at those shows were always unplanned and unannounced. He knew I was going, and he simply went along for the ride. While other celebrities were charging twenty or thirty dollars for their autographs, Ray would find a vacant spot, sit and hold court and talk to each and every fan who approached him. He’d sign a book or photo or blank piece of paper, then look up and say, “That’ll be $2.98!” A woman might walk up, hands trembling, and say, “Mr. Bradbury, I met you at USC in 1976!” Ray would grab her hand, do a double take and declare, “You haven’t changed a bit!” Wherever he went, he had the power to uplift any spirit and elevate every occasion. One of the sweetest, funniest encounters involves the priceless moment when sweet, beautiful blonde actress Julie McCullough – a former PLAYBOY centerfold and star of the sitcom GROWING PAINS – ran up to me in the crowd and pleaded, “Oh, please! Can Mr. Bradbury wait here for just a second? He’s my favorite writer ever, and I need to run back to my table and grab something for him to sign.” Ray kept his eyes closely peeled on Julie as he watched her scurry off into the crowd. Then he looked at me and cried, “Oh, God – where was she when I needed her?”

I feel so incredibly blessed to have known and loved Ray for twenty extraordinary years. I’ll always be grateful for his unfailing friendship, his unflinching support and his unconditional love. The loss that all of us feel today is so staggering and so colossal, but at the same time it’s hard for me not to smile through the tears and sadness because my memories of Ray are all so radiant and happy. If there is a heaven – and if there isn’t, there certainly should be (and who knows – maybe, after all, Mars really is heaven ...) – Ray is reunited now with his parents, Leonard and Esther, with his brother Skip and his cherished Aunt Neva, with Mr. Electrico and Blackstone the Magician, with Walt Disney and Chuck Jones, with Fellini and Hitchcock, with Norman Corwin and Charles Laughton, with James Whitmore and Harold Gould, with Julie Schwartz and Uncle Forry. And he’s finally meeting his own beloved boyhood idols – from Shakespeare, Dickens and Melville to Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney. You know they’ll have a grand old time.

The last time I saw Ray was in late April of this year, when my wife Anita and our two children, Forrest and Alexandra, spent five glorious days in L.A. We visited Ray for at least an hour each of those five days, and every visit was precious and ecstatic. Anita showered him with hugs and kisses, the kids bombarded him with breathless questions, and I sat by his bedside and read to him – not only from his own inspiring stories and essays, but from Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH, the book that inspired his mythic space odyssey THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. We made plans for future play productions and made progress on a pair of book projects. As always, Ray was brimming with boyish energy and enthusiasm, reveling in that sweet state of mind he liked to call “yestermorrow.” I brought him DVDs of two of his all-time favorite films, Lon Chaney’s HE WHO GETS SLAPPED and H.G. Wells’ THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES, an imagi-movie favorite he had not seen since his historic trip to the New York World’s Fair and the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. He watched both in one night, then grabbed my hand when we arrived the next day and cried, “Oh, God – thank you for giving me back my past!” On our final visit, our two kids – ages six and seven at the time – joined Ray for an impromptu musical jam session, singing and playing “Ramona,” “Good Morning” and “Singin’ in the Rain” on harmonica, ukulele and mandolin. As a ragtag trio, they made a truly joyful noise. When we left, Ray hugged me tight and told me, with sweet tears in his eyes, “You’ve been such an important part of my life. You are my Super-Honorary Son, and I love you very much.” I can think of no finer farewell.

I am honored to be here today – like each and every one of you – as just one of Ray’s many emissaries and evangelists, his own renegade band of Book People. Throughout his life, Ray helped us face our fears and inadequacies, he challenged us to build a better and brighter future, and he warned us of the terrifying consequences if we fail to rise to that challenge. Every time I teach his stories or essays to college students in my writing and literature classes, every time I produce one of his plays, every time I screen one of his films, and every time I share his work with my own two children – who will always love (and already miss) their dear “Papa Ray” – I’ll be ever mindful that he considered us his true Machineries of Joy.

– Terry Pace, Los Angeles, June 12, 2012