I didn’t watch it either. It did seem like he was in about 700 After School Specials, which I also didn’t watch. Mostly I remember him from the covers of my older sisters magazines.

Oh, I remember Lance quite well.  We watched the show a bit and he made guest appearances across a bunch of other tv shows; plus, the after-school specials.  My late wife was rewatching the series last year, so I absorbed some of it, by osmosis.  The only part I really recalled was an episode where he was in love with a woman who was pregnant (or he thought she was) and fixes dinner that is undercooked and gets sick.

He did an episode of Trapper John MD, where he and a girlfriend are living on the streets and are suffering the effects of malnutrition and some other medical issue.

On of the projects he did that I remember quite well was The Loneliest Runner.  He is a long distance runner, in high school, who has a bed wetting problem.  His mother, fed up with the situation, tries to shame him out of it by hanging the sheets out the window to dry.  He would race home from school to pull them in, before his friends see them, but doesn't make it in time, on afternoon and they see it.  He runs off when they laugh and ends up hiding out in a department store, all night, and is eventually found, in the morning asleep.  When his father picks him up, he tells him that he had a dry night.

He did episodes on The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Gunsmoke, Police Story, Shazam, Emergency and was a co-star in the film Enemy Mine.  He was noted for sensitive portrayals and aside from the Loneliest Runner, appeared in topical films like, The Boy Who Drank Too Much, Children of Divorce and the aforementioned After School Specials (he did 5 of them).

He also co-starred in the tv movie, The Greatest Gift, which served as a pilot for the series The Family Holvak, a Depression-era family drama, starring Glenn Ford as a minister (trying to ape The Waltons success, no doubt).

The main reason he became less prominent, as time wore on, aside from aging out of roles, was that he had a severe drug and alcohol problem, through his teens and 20s, finding sobriety in the 90s.  he was involved in ministry work, including with a drug and alcohol program, in Hawaii.  He did, however, face charges of filing false documents for medical assistance and food stamps, in Hawaii, while failing to disclose ownership of three properties.  So, the religious conversion didn't completely keep him on the straight and narrow.

It's a shame that he struggled with his demons and 62 is pretty darn young, though it would seem likely that his past drug abuse certainly contributed to shortening his life, aside from his career.  he was a fine actor and one of the few young actors who really acted and not in a showy way, but in an honest fashion.  His father was an acting coach and his mother had been an actor and talent agent and they used to give him scripts to read, at a young age.  He absorbed them well, because I don't recall a bad performance from him.

Someone posted The Loneliest runner on Youtube, in segments....



It was a pet project of Michael Landon, who wrote, directed and produced it, and appears as the older version of Lance's character.  He also cast Melissa Sue Anderson as a girl in the school.  It was based on his own experiences with bedwetting, until he was 14.  I never had that issue, beyond the usual stages (apart from one drunken night, in college, after a couple of beers and some everclear punch), but the movie was well done, with a great cast and it pulls you in.  Kerwin really had the ability to make you empathize with his character.

Tom Verlaine from proto-punk/alternative band Television has gone at 73. Their 1977 album Marquee Moon is rightly regarded as something of a masterpiece and was certainly influential on a great many New Wave, indie and alternative rock bands in the decades after its release. Verlaine himself was an innovative songwriter and performer, with a very distinctive guitar and vocal style.

RIP to singer/songwriter Barrett Strong, who penned a lot of hits for Mowtown artists and others. He was responsible for ""I Heard It Through The Grapevine," "War," "Pappa Was a Rolling Stone," "Ball of Confusion (That's What The World is Today)," and "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)".

He had his own hit with "Money (That's What I want).

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in 2004.

Just lost a hometown legend. Hockey great Bobby Hull has died at 84.

Lisa Loring, the actress who played the original Wednesday Addams in the 1960s Addams Family TV show, has passed at what I don't really consider the very old age of 64. She apparently suffered a severe stroke and was on life support for a few days.