John Hertz saw the separate posts about Bradbury’s Walk of Fame star and Ed Green and experienced a kind of déjà vu — remembering when LASFS President Ed Green sent Ray this letter on behalf of the club:
Congratulations on your being awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I appointed John Hertz to attend for the Club. He is only a 30-year member, which I realize is paltry in your case, but he duly reported everything to our 3,372nd meeting, Thursday, April 4th [2002].
We rejoiced to hear of Mayor Hahn and Councilman Garcetti speaking in your honor, as well as Stan Freberg, Charlton Heston, and Rod Steiger. Any of your readers would concur with Mr. Steiger that what makes your work last is its humanity, and with Mr. Garcetti that a story like Fahrenheit 451 inspires us not to take liberty for granted. When the Mayor named this book as the one he asks all Los Angeles to read for the sake of community, it showed how an author with your imagination could reach people with science fiction.
It was surely right that the star was placed outside Larry Edmunds’ bookshop, where you have been a customer for 50 years, and many of us go as well. If Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President Johnny Grant pretended it was you, not your father, who went to school with Jack Benny in Waukegan, Illinois, that could not have been wrong for April Fool’s Day. And the day was surely right for you, in the highest sense a dreamer and a fool, who can spark the minds of princes, who as Shakespeare knew needs no little art to use his folly like a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that, to shoot his wit.
On this occasion we applauded you again.
