Tuesday Reads

UPDATE:  Tony Dow is still among the living, but he is in hospice care at this time and reportedly is close to death, according to his son.  Since he is in his last hours, I will keep the obituary up on this blog.

 Tony Dow is on his deathbed, his family told media outlets on Tuesday after it was incorrectly reported by the 77-year-old Leave It to Beaver star's management team that he had died.

Dow's son Christopher confirmed to PEOPLE: "This is a difficult time. Yes he is still alive but in his last hours. Under hospice care."

"My wife and I are by his side," Christopher added, expanding on his comments to Fox News Digital.

Dow's wife, Lauren Shulkind, also confirmed to CBS News her husband is "near death."

Obituary:  Sad news today as actor and sculptor Tony Dow, 77, has passed away just weeks after having announced he had cancer.  He was best remembered as playing Wally, older brother of Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, in the classic 1950s through early 1960s  sitcom, Leave It To Beaver.  I believe Jerry Mathers, who played the title role, is the last remaining major cast member of the series.

I had met supporting actors Frank Bank and Ken Osmond (Lumpy and Eddie, respectively) when they appeared for a number of times at Reno's Hot August Nights celebration.  Both of them passed a few years ago.  Tony and Jerry never appeared there, to my knowledge.

After the roles started drying up for Tony, he turned to sculpting.

Snip:

In a January interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Dow recalled learning over a hamburger and malt that he was offered the part after auditioning on a whim.

"There went my life," he said.

Wally Cleaver, the straight-arrow teenage son, star athlete and Boy Scout, became inextricably tied to Dow, who said he struggled to stand on his own.

"It's sad to be famous at 12 years old or something, and then you grow up and become a real person, and nothing's happened for you," he told CBS.

Dow, who said he experienced undiagnosed depression from age 20 to age 40, spoke out for decades about his mental health challenges, long before it was common for celebrities to disclose that information publicly. In 1993, he was an honorary speaker at a convention for the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association.

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Matt Gaetz will be lucky to stay out of jail. He has a lot of room to talk about women who get abortions.

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