You're Invited!

   
     When I was growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the highlight of the year was the gathering for the annual family reunion. Relatives arrived from everywhere and we spent the weekend reminiscing, hugging, feasting, catching up on the news, getting acquainted with new babies that had been born or an in-law that had been added since we were all last together. There were tears for those we had loved and lost, and one of the uncles might have a bit too much of the "recipe" but in the end everybody went home, happy, proud and enriched for having shared a very special event.

      The Walton Family recently celebrated such an occasion. At the invitation of the great show business magazine ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY the actors gathered at Warner Brothers Ranch in Burbank, California. Richard Thomas flew out from New York. Ralph Waite came over from his home in the desert, and the others in the cast assembled from various towns up and down the California coast. There at the replica of the house made so famous on the television series, our host filmed not only a photographic essay for the magazine, but also a television film of the gathering.

      No, there was no "recipe" served. The intoxication came from just being together, still a close and loving family who worked together forty years ago and became a family with a family’s enduring ties.

      Read the story in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY when it hits the newsstands this coming Friday, October 18th, and also on that same day, dial up ABC’S Morning Show "GOOD MORNING AMERICA" to visit one more time with our family.