From: "Rich Gauszka" 

I was one of those children in the 50s enjoying  'Watch Mr. Wizard'.
Herbert was also a B-24 bomber pilot in WWII. Unlike Dick Cheney Herbert
didn't have "better things to do" than serve his country when it
counted

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003745404_mrwizardobit13.htm
l
LOS ANGELES - Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to
millions of young baby boomers on television in the 1950s and '60s as
"Mr. Wizard" and did the same for a later generation of
youngsters on the Nickelodeon cable TV channel in the 1980s, died Tuesday.
He was 89.

Mr. Herbert died at his home in Bell Canyon after a long battle with
multiple myeloma, said his son-in-law Tom Nikosey.

A low-key, avuncular presence who wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves
rolled up and a tie, Mr. Herbert launched his weekly half-hour science show
for children on NBC in 1951. "Watch Mr. Wizard" - broadcast live
from Chicago on Saturdays the first few years and then from New York - ran
for 14 years.

Mr. Herbert used basic experiments to teach scientific principles to his TV
audience via an in-studio guest boy or girl who assisted in the
experiments.

Born July 10, 1917, in Waconia, Minn. Mr. Herbert grew up in La Crosse,
Wis., and graduated from LaCrosse State Teachers College in 1940.

In 1942, he volunteered for the Army Air Forces. As a B-24 bomber pilot, he
flew 56 missions over Italy, Germany and Yugoslavia and received the
Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three oak-leaf clusters.

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