At the start of the show, the couple are the parents of Wally, a 13-year-old in the seventh grade, and seven-year-old ("almost eight") second-grader Theodore, nicknamed "The Beaver".

A typical episode from Leave It to Beaver follows a misadventure committed by one or both of the boys, and ends with the culprits receiving a moral lecture from their father and a hot meal from their mother.

Max Showalter (appearing as Casey Adams) plays Ward in the series' pilot, "It's a Small World", which aired in April 1957.

Ward's principal dramatic function in the series is to end each episode with moral instruction for one or both of his errant sons.

Ward is a farmer's son and hails from Shaker Heights, an actual location in Ohio, which also has a suburb called Mayfield.

Ward attended a preparatory school, is a veteran of World War II (having served as a surveyor in the Seabees), a state college graduate (majoring in philosophy),[2] and member of a fraternity (Alpha Kappa), a responsible white-collar professional, and an upstanding citizen.

He has a meerschaum pipe (the gift of Fred Rutherford), which Beaver and Larry fill with coffee grounds and smoke.

Ward also has a bottle of brandy in the dining room credenza that Beaver gives to an alcoholic handyman and then to a tramp.

His co-worker and friend is Fred Rutherford, a smug, pompous man who refers to the workplace as "the salt mine".

Ward has a bachelor uncle named Billy who was a world traveler, played in the series by Edgar Buchanan.

Ward mentions his parents (usually his father, a strict disciplinarian who believed in corporal punishment) when recalling incidents from his boyhood.