'Waltons' cast to reunite at Lawrence County fall fest

Kami Cotler never really said goodnight to “The Waltons.”

Although she left acting when the television series’ nine-season run ended in 1981, the actress who grew up in millions of living rooms as she portrayed Elizabeth Walton remains part of the famous family.

The same holds true for other actors from the series who, along with Cotler, will be in the Lawrence County area later this year for the Waltons’ Fall Fest.

The event, set for Oct. 4 through 6 with events at Gatherings Banquet and Event Center in Edinburg and Cheeseman Farms in Portersville, includes meet and greets as well as more formal events with the cast.

“Like a Waltons’ meal, there will be storytelling and maybe a little misbehaving,” Cotler said with a laugh during a phone interview from her Los Angeles-area home.

There will also be “Waltons”-themed items for sale including Christmas ornaments made by Cotler and her daughter and copies of Mary McDonough’s (Erin Walton) memoir, “Lessons From the Mountain.”

Original cast members scheduled to attend besides Cotler and McDonough are Eric Scott (Ben Walton), Leslie Winston (Cindy Walton), Tony Becker (Drew Cutler) and David Doremus (G.W. Haines).

“I’d see my TV siblings now and again, there’d be a wedding, a baby shower, someone would be in a play, and we came up with the idea for a reunion for the show’s 50th anniversary (in 2022),” explained Cotler, who from age 6 to 16 played Elizabeth, the red-headed, pigtailed youngest Walton child.

“We started with a few events in Virginia (where “The Waltons” was set) and people would say you should come to Pennsylvania or wherever,” she continued. “’The Waltons’ was about working people and that’s who our fans are, so it’s always smaller places. Most of our fans are not people who could on a whim go to Los Angeles.”

Airing on Thursday nights from 1972 to 1981, “The Waltons” told the story John and Olivia Walton and their seven children, a Depression-era family living in the mountains of rural Virginia. The Emmy Award-winning show tackled everything from mundane family matters to more serious themes such as anti-Semitism, religious fanaticism, book burning and intolerance.

Each episode ended with the Walton children telling each other goodnight and made saying “Goodnight, John-Boy,” a reference to the lead character and eldest Walton child (played by Richard Thpmas), a popular catchphrase that will probably be heard in some variation at the October gathering.

“Sometimes people remember the tiniest things and ask really detailed questions. I’m shocked what they remember and it gets awkward when they remember more than me,” Cotler laughed. “But there’s always someone in line who can answer because they know the show better than me.

“It’s not unusual for people to share stories about the show’s impact on their lives. We hear a lot of things like, ‘I watched your show with my grandma while she was going through chemo,’” she said noting that “The Waltons” gained new fans during COVID lockdowns.

“A lot of people stumbled onto it in syndication during COVID,” she explained. “It gave us a new audience and I think gave people some comfort during that time of uncertainty.

“The landscape of the world today is certainly different than a bunch of people living on a mountain in the 1930s, but there are certain things, like the importance of family, that are universal,” Cotler said.

Leaving “The Waltons” as a 16-year-old, Cotler decided to pursue other interests and entered college early.

“I wanted to do other things, and I found that as an older teen auditioning there was a lot of jealousy, competition and weird energy that I wasn’t used to,” Cotler recalled.

While she did return for several Walton reunion films and had a cameo in a Hallmark movie version of one of McDonough’s books, Cotler largely retired from acting and focused on a career as an educator and leader in California’s charter school movement.

Now mostly retired, she focuses on her garden and her family – meaning both her husband and two adult children as well as her Walton siblings.

“(The reunions are) an excuse for us to be together. We try to get to an area a few days early and go out to eat and see the architecture and the area. From age 6 to 16, I spent more waking time with these people than most real families spend together.

“Even though we’ve been friends for decades and decades, it’s always magical when we get together. I think people want to believe that what they saw on TV was reality and in a way it was.”

rgendreau@ncnewsonline.com