He and the pilot were forced to tread water for hours at a time to stay afloat, but after growing exhausted, his comrade succumbed to his injuries and drowned, while John-Boy, who had suffered extreme head trauma, lost consciousness as he was rescued from the sea.
[2] Olivia, also known as Liv, Livie, or Mama, (pilot, Patricia Neal; series, Michael Learned) is John Walton Senior's soft-spoken, patient, religious, loving wife, who complements his tough-skinned, opinionated nature.
Referred to as "Zeb" to friends, "Zeb" or "old man" by his wife Esther (who in turn is lovingly referred to as "old woman" or "old girl"), "Pa" by his son John, "Grandpa" by Olivia and the rest of the family, and "the Grandfather" in the show's opening credits, likes to spend his time working with John in the sawmill, fishing, walking the mountain, occasionally playing a game of billiards at the pool table in the back of Ike Godsey"s Mercantile general store, and playing with and teaching his grandkids.
While something of a tomboy who enjoyed playing baseball, Mary Ellen was also prone to melodrama and vanity, engaging in a rivalry with "rich girl" Martha Rose Coverdale at the Walton's Mountain little schoolhouse for the affections of the awkward but warm-hearted G.W.
Mary Ellen matures into a much wiser, strong-minded young woman and her childish fantasy of becoming a movie star gives way for a more reasonable and realistic ambition to go into nursing / medicine after reading up on it and developing an interest.
As a teenager, Elizabeth often babysits her nephew John-Curtis (son of sister Mary Ellen and first husband Dr. Curtis Willard) and her niece Virginia / "Ginny" (daughter of older brother Ben and Cindy).
Later she travels in Europe and gets into a relationship that dissolves right as she was planning to get married; decades later she joins the famous Peace Corps of the early 1960s (during the President John F. Kennedy administration) in the sixth (and last, so far) of the sequel reunion movies.
Ben's passionate love interest, introduced in the season 7 episode 10 of "Day of Infamy;" (played first in one appearance in December 1978 by Robin Eisenman, and later by Leslie Winston), who portrayed Cindy for the rest of the series and reunion films, from 1979 to 1981.
She made a striking entrance driving a characteristic expensive red roadster car and had a provocative reputation that earned her the nickname "Sinful Cindy" based on people's initial surface judgments of her.
Ben suddenly decided to elope with her without consulting his family, which made them worry that he hadn't thought the decision through, but the couple proved to be sound as the moved into the house's side shed (of John-Boy's old newspaper office and printing press) plus soon became the parents of a healthy baby girl, Virginia, named after Cindy's home, and later nicknamed "Ginny".
In a case of dramatic irony, Cindy would end up considering adoption several years later after a tragic event caused her own and Ben's daughter little Virginia to drown, which drove her to the brink of despair.
After grandma Esther's role in the series begins to diminish because of her stroke, and the Walton children are growing up, she and her grandchildren Jeffrey and Serena show up at their house looking for a place to stay, and Rose is desperate to find a safe haven from their old residence / rowhouse in Baltimore.
She and Emily live nearby in Judge Baldwin's distinctive Colonial era Georgian / Federal style architecture brick mansion with a neat, well-manicured lawn, untouched apparently from the Great Depression economic bad times in the early 1930s at the beginning of the series.
Matthew Fordwick (John Ritter, 1948–2003), comes to the community fresh from Southern Baptist Convention seminary trained as a hardline Biblical strict legalist and fundamentalist, until he accidentally gets himself drunk on the infamous "The Recipe" at a visit with the Baldwin sisters, who happen to be his distant cousins.
Verdie Grant (Lynn Hamilton, born 1930), is a middle-aged African-American widow (née Harris), with two adult sons and three daughters, the youngest of whom, Claire, is graduating from college in the state capital Richmond, and later suffers a failed marriage for her education.
After resolution of a misunderstanding caused by Elizabeth unknowingly revealing her secret to local school teacher Miss Hunter, she completes her lessons and becomes a close friend of the Waltons, appearing in a total of 17 episodes.
After her father died before she could ask him about his past, Verdie discovered an ornamental necklace among his belongings, sparking a desire to learn more about her heritage and ancestry, despite her husband's warnings not to pry into the ugliness of a bygone time.
Though he is unquestionably the best man in the county for the sheriff's job, he needs the occasional help of John-Boy's investigative journalism on his Blue Ridge Chronicle paper to survive a re-election threat from a charismatic, well-connected politician looking to use the office as a stepping stone to the state legislature.
[9] John-Boy's research reunites Ep with Sara Griffith (Lynn Carlin, born 1938), a volunteer Army and Red Cross nurse and ambulance driver in France who treated him for his wounds, but lost touch with him when he was transferred to another military hospital.
Sara Griffith (Lynn Carlin, born 1938) is an American Red Cross nurse working in the state capital of Richmond, Virginia, to whom Blue Ridge Chronicle newspaper editor / publisher John-Boy turns to research Ep Bridges' World War I service record.
However, by then, the outbreak of World War II has led him to join the Army, and places him in a troubling environment with many men who are sexually active and act crude and indecently around Erin as he tries to date her while upholding respect and civility where none can be found.
Flossie has the ability to tell people's fortunes with tea leaves, and stood watch over the youngest Walton children during the family's earlier frequent childbirths that required them to stay out of mischief.
In the episode, "The Fire Storm", from the fifth season, when John Boy arouses controversy by reprinting passages in his local newspaper from dictator Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf, her ability to speak German is pivotal to stopping a staged anti-Nazi symbolic book-burning begun by the misguided Rev.
An older woman played by Pearl Shear (1918–2009), a plump bright blonde-haired vivacious resident at Flossie Brimmer's boarding house, and known for being a flirt to any of the male boarders, who enjoys especially the telling a good story.
Haines while training in the military, is also the episode in which he finally marries waitress / barmaid Sissy Walker Tucker (Cissy Wellman, born 1943) who's been chasing and flirting with him for a long while from the local dive / roadhouse, the Dew Drop Inn.
He causes quite a stir among the surrounding residents of the little hamlet when he breaks into the neglected and boarded up church and to announce his unexpected arrival, starts to ring the steeple bell vigorously in the middle of the night awakening everyone around Walton's Mountain.
Judge Baldwin is widely recognized by the older community of Walton's Mountain and Jefferson County for his occupation and prestige, as well as his advocacy of "The Recipe", which disturbs Corabeth, Esther and Olivia to no end whenever their menfolk indulge occasionally.
In contrast, his late wife is seldom mentioned by his daughters, as their father's personality legacy was so prolific, overwhelming and authoritative on them compared to their mother, who led a relatively quiet parallel life of hobbies.
Martha Corinne, the widow of Zeb's older brother, Henry Walton, first appears in the two-part season three episode "The Conflict", in which she and her family are displaced from their ancient log cabin on the scenic mountain-top land by construction of the famous north–south Blue Ridge Parkway through the Appalachian Mountains chain as one of the "New Deal" program projects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.
Later, before she eventually passes away smelling a flower bed off the road after Jason rides her in the rebuilt wooden pony cart / shay that he and Zeb worked on and restored so Martha Corinne could paint her folk art of exquisite flowery designs on the sides.