Only 68!

My Three Sons was a TV show I watched pretty regularly in the 1960's. 

Oh, it was a silly show and their Grandpa was very cantankerous but I was in love with Don Grady.   He played Robbie Douglas on the TV show and he was only two years older than me.  I thought he was the most adorable teen star EVER.  Well, aside from Troy Donahue -- who for most of my teen years was only in the beach movies -- until he joined 77 Sunset Strip (give us you comb, Cookie).   And David McCullum on Man From Uncle.  And there was also Michael Landon on Bonanza -- I walked a mile plus home from school every day pretending I was on the Bonanza prairie and Little Joe was going to rescue me from the horse thieves.  Those were the days.  But Little Joe and Ilia and Troy Boy were all adults.  Don Grady was my age -- or close to it.

I followed Don through his high school TV angst and into his college years when he unexpectedly got married on the TV show.  I didn't much care for those episodes -- but I did desperately want the hair of his TV bride.  Plus she was so nice and dressed so prettily and feminine in every episode.  But look at the picture of the family -- everybody in a suit AND tie?  Really?  I bet they wore overcoats and hats to church on Sunday, too. 

Fred McMurray, the father on the show, loved his boys without exception.  And Grandpa was always around to make dinner.  I wanted to live in that household where everything was perfect and everything always came out right in the end and no one ever got drunk or screamed through the house at 9:00 p.m. breaking dishes and your father wasn't hiding in the bedroom, afraid to come out because he'd get hit if he did.  And everything that went wrong in your family was always your fault. 

Today it was announced that Don Grady died at age 68 from cancer.  He was handsome even in his later years, wasn't he? 

He probably could care less that he was the boy I "loved from a far" during the 1960's -- in fact, he probably hated all those teen girls screaming after him.  Still, the TV role he played brought me a great deal of happiness.  He was always handsome, polite, helpful, and decent. I knew he would have danced with me at the junior high hop -- even though I couldn't really dance and felt like a fat wallflower.  He has that kind of mannerly gentleness -- and his father would have insisted.