Gene Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas, to Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline "Glen" Golemon Roddenberry. He grew up in Los Angeles, California, where his father worked for the Los Angeles Police Department. He attended Berendo Junior High School (now Berendo Middle School). After graduating from Franklin High School, Roddenberry took classes in Police Studies at Los Angeles City College where he also became the head of the Police Club, acting as a liaison for the FBI. Roddenberry furthered his studies at Columbia University, the University of Miami, and the University of Southern California.
Per People magazine article, November 11, 1991, it says the Imagination was always important to Roddenberry, who loved listening to radio serials while growing up in Los Angeles, one of three children of Caroline Roddenberry, a housewife, and Eugene, a police officer. He attended several colleges, including UCLA, without graduating; his writing career got under way in the early 1950s, when he began contributing scripts to TV series including Dragnet, Naked City and Have Gun, Will Travel.
Roddenberry was married twice and had three children. His first marriage was to Eileen Rexroat, which lasted 27 years. They had two daughters, Darlene (1947-1995) and Dawn (1953-). During the 1960s, he was involved in extra-marital affairs with Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett (1932-2008). He divorced Rexroat and married Barrett in Japan in a traditional Shinto ceremony on August 6, 1969. They had one child together—his only son, Eugene Wesley, Jr. Roddenberry's marriage to Barrett lasted until his death in 1991.
Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, of heart failure at the age of 70. In 1992, a portion of Roddenberry's ashes were carried on board the Space Shuttle Columbia during the STS-52 mission. On April 21, 1997, a lipstick-sized capsule carrying a portion of Roddenberry's ashes, along with those of Timothy Leary and 19 other individuals, were launched into orbit aboard an air-launched Pegasus XL rocket near the Canary Islands as part of the Celestis "Founder's Flight" by parent company Space Services International. By 2004, the orbital height of the secondary payload capsule containing the cremains had deteriorated enough that the capsule disintegrated in the atmosphere. Another Space Services' "Voyager Flight" is planned for 2012 to launch more of Roddenberry's ashes into deep space along with his wife Majel's ashes.[