Gillooly Can’t Clear Name, So He Changes It

Mayor Jeff Stone didn’t like it. Neither did the Jeff Stone who works for NASA’s Mission Control.

Even the guy who played Jeff Stone on TV’s “Donna Reed Show” showed up Tuesday to fight Jeff Gillooly’s attempt to change his name to Jeff Stone.

In the end, though, after a 10-minute hearing, District Judge Dale Koch decided the exhusband of figure skater Tonya Harding can become Jeff Stone.

“Another sorry saga in the history of American jurisprudence,” said Paul Petersen, who played Donna Reed’s son Jeff Stone on the TV series that ran from 1958 to 1966 and remains in syndication. “We have lost our common sense. I feel for the country.”

Gillooly, who was not at the hearing, is scheduled for release Monday from a prison boot camp. He’s served seven months for plotting the attack on Harding’s skating rival Nancy Kerrigan.

“He would like to have some degree of anonymity and not be recognized as the individual involved in the attack,” his lawyer, Judy Snyder, said.

Mayor Jeff Stone of Temecula, Calif., argued that his good name would be sullied if he were forced to share it with Gillooly.

Petersen accused Gillooly of mocking the wholesome image of the “Donna Reed Show.”

Jeff Stone, who works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, spread the word via the Internet that he didn’t want to share his name with Gillooly. Nine other Jeff Stones vowed to join him, and one, from Roswell, Ga., did join the court battle.

Snyder, meanwhile, hopes the newest Jeff Stone will just blend in with everyone else.

“We’re hopeful that some years from now people will say, ‘You know, that guy looks familiar, but I can’t remember who he is.”’