Lyn Osborn (1926-58)

Clois Lynn Osborn was born January 23, 1926, in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was called "Buddy" by his family. When he was three the family moved to Michigan, where his father worked in the oil industry. In high school, Buddy was busy with the school band playing clarinet, flute, and piccolo, as well as with drama groups.

Buddy joined the Navy soon after high school graduation. He was stationed at Great Lakes, near Chicago, during World War II. Soon after his discharge, he began taking various kinds of jobs, then hitchhiked to California, where, after doing everything from driving a taxi to washing dishes, he began taking classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, which is actually a university for those who want to get into the acting business, although it doesn't give actual bachelor's degrees. He took a three year course on the GI Bill. This meant performing in 25 plays a year. And he changed his name from Clois Lynn Osborn to Lyn Osborn.

On March 9, 1950, ten days before his graduation, he was Cadet Happy on the Space Patrol television series. At first, the show was on for 15 minutes every Saturday on the ABC television network. It was increased to a half hour in December of that year.

In June 1952, the Space Patrol radio series began broadcasting daily shows, also over ABC. In addition KECA-TV (later known as KABC-TV) also broadcast a local 15 minute TV series. In all there would be over 2000 episodes of various types by the time the series went off the air July 2, 1954.

Buddy, uh, Lyn, went on to do many grade B movies. He always had a positive attitude on life. He never married. He became ill in 1958 and died during brain surgery on August 30 of that year at the age of 32.

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The sponsors for Space Patrol were Ralston Purina and Nestle. The Ralston products included Chex cereals, which included only Wheat Chex and Corn Chex at this time. Rice Chex would not appear until 1958. There was one other Ralston product, Hot Ralston Cereal, which is still being made by Ralcorp, the successor to Ralston Purina's cereal division. In 1998, the dry cereal division was acquired by General Mills. That makes Chex a Big G product!

Nestle (which was pronounced NESS-LEE back in those days) products included Nestle's Chocolate Bars (Milk Chocolate and Crunch), Nestle's Eveready Cocoa Mix, and Nestle's Quik (called Nesquik in the United States since 1998, and in other countries since the 1950s). In 1987, the Carnation Company was purchased by Nestle and many products had a complete revamping. The Eveready Cocoa Mix was similar to todays single serve packages of hot chocolate but it was in a big can, similar to Nestle's Quik.

When the writer ends up with a short biography, like this one, look for these little gems of information like this. This is the first of many of these.