Jean Shepherd

Jean Parker "Shep" Shepherd Jr. (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American storyteller, humorist, radio and TV personality, writer, and actor. With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is known for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semiautobiographical stories. Early life Born in 1921 to Jean Parker Shepherd and his wife, Anna, on the South Side of Chicago, Shepherd Jr. briefly lived in East Chicago, Indiana, and was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he graduated from Hammond High School in 1939. A Christmas Story is loosely based on his days growing up in Hammond's southeast side neighborhood of Hessville. As a youth, he worked briefly as a mail carrier in a steel mill and earned his amateur radio license (W9QWN) at age 16, sometimes claiming he was even younger. He sporadically attended Indiana University, but never graduated. During World War II, he served stateside in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Shepherd then had an extensive career in a variety of media. Career