There are dozens and dozens of articles online about Norman Lear, who has died at the impressive age of 101. They all talk about how many hit TV shows he had and how they changed the landscape of American television…so you don't need me to tell you that. I'll just direct you to this article, this article, this article and while we're at it, this article.
So I'll just add these personal thoughts: There were folks who didn't like how television changed because of Mr. Lear's influence and there were those who didn't like his politics. I think though that if any of them had met him, they would have had a hard time disliking the man. He was genial, charming, funny and not the kind of human to act like he was any better than you were, even though he probably was.
And one of the secrets as to how he could have so many shows on the air at one time, as he did for number of years there, is that he was very good at delegating. I worked on two shows for which he was Executive Producer and never met him on either. The few times I did meet him were strictly social and we spent most of one encounter talking about The Night They Raided Minsky's, a movie he co-produced which I liked and which he liked talking about. I doubt we could have had a conversation about All in the Family or Maude or Sanford & Son or some of the others that he hadn't had with others a thousand times before…but he was not bored with talking about Minsky's.
We also talked a bit about Jerry Lewis. In his early days in television, Lear and his then-partner Ed Simmons wrote for Jerry. An interviewer once asked Lear how it was that he treated the people who worked for him so well and he said something about remembering how Jerry had treated people and just doing the opposite.
Nothing in our conversations was particularly memorable or quotable. You can get the memorable and quotable stuff and a sense of what he accomplished by reading the articles linked above or the many others appearing online at the moment. I just wanted to get on here and tell you how he struck me as a very nice and very wise man.