For followers of The Waltons, few episodes resonate as deeply because the Season 7 premiere, titled “The Empty Nest,” through which the Walton household says farewell to their beloved patriarch, Grandpa Zeb Walton. However the mourning you noticed on display wasn’t simply fiction; Will Geer, the warm-hearted actor who embodied the elder Walton by way of Seasons 1–6, handed away from respiratory failure on April 22, 1978, on the age of 76.
His dying got here shortly after filming wrapped on Season 6, and adopted the sooner absence of Ellen Corby (Grandma Esther) as a consequence of a debilitating stroke. The present’s creators selected to not recast the position, as an alternative writing Geer’s passing into the storyline, permitting the characters and the viewers to grieve collectively in a heartfelt episode.