Dad’s fame secondary to family life

For the past 42 years Patricia Stone has spent Thanksgiving with her parents. They traveled to wherever Stone and her husband, Jim, lived to share this special holiday, missing just three years in the four-decade run because of illness or work.

This will be her first year without her father. After he died this past summer at age 89, she asked me if I could please find a way to tell people about him. And it occurs to me that Thanksgiving might just be the right time.

Even though he never lived here and most of us never met him, a lot of us know him just the same. He was a nationally known actor, not one of those who received top billing but one who always had steady work and was instantly recognizable, even if you didn’t know his name.

If you are old enough, you’ll remember young Robert (Bob) Hastings from “Coast-to-Coast on a Bus” and “National Barn Dance” in the 1930s. In the 1940s he was a regular on the TV series “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and the voice of radio’s “Archie Andrews.” Then came “No Time For Sergeants” on the U.S. Steel Hour and some of his best-known roles – Lt. Carpenter on “McHale’s Navy,” Tommy Kelsey (Archie Bunker’s pal) on “All in the Family” and Capt. Burt Ramsey on the soap opera “General Hospital.” He even portrayed the same character (Commissioner Gordon) on four different series – “Batman: The Animated Series” (1992), “Superman” (1996), “The New Batman Adventures” (1997) and “Static Shock” (2000). Plus roles in “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Airport 1975” and countless appearances on television in shows such as “The Rockford Files,” “Twilight Zone,” “Green Acres” and more, including voice-overs for numerous Hanna Barbera cartoons. Oh, and a lot of song and story albums for children.

As his career grew, Hastings moved from Brooklyn to Burbank with his young family, which included four children, of whom Tricia is the oldest. “We went to school with Bob Hope’s children and had lots of friends who were the children of celebrities. Bob Newhart’s wife was our first babysitter,” she said.

What she finds so remarkable about her father wasn’t his success in a very glamorous business. “That wasn’t important to him. Growing up I was never aware of it all since we weren’t allowed to watch television, except on the weekends, not even ‘McHale’s Navy.’ He never talked about business at the dinner table; it was always about school and about the family.”

He could be stern and exacting sometimes and had high standards for his children, insisting that they present themselves as ladies and gentlemen both in public and in their private lives.

He offered his daughter a Jesuit education and sent her to Gonzaga University, where Tricia admits she did not focus on her studies. When her father saw her first grades and realized she did not properly value what she had been given, he brought her back home, where she had to work to earn money for college. With that earned money she returned to Spokane and enrolled at Eastern Washington University, where she maintained a straight-A average. Recognizing her accomplishment, Hastings then paid her tuition so she could return to Gonzaga, where she graduated with degrees in English and education. She married Jim Stone, whom she had met at Eastern, and they worked as teachers in various communities in Washington – Wenatchee, Omak, Ellensburg, Yakima and finally Spokane.

Her siblings remained in California, where they were able to see their parents often. “Because of that, Dad and Mom came to us every Thanksgiving,” Tricia said. “That was our holiday – always with creamed onions, candied yams with marshmallows, champagne … but no mince pie.”

Tricia and Jim are now retired, and Jim is active with the basketball coaching program created by Gonzaga coach Jerry Krause at St. Aloysius School, and so the family is devoutly Bulldog. And so was Hastings, who donned his Bulldog gear when in Spokane and attended as many Gonzaga basketball games as he could.

He also delighted in Spokane itself and being here with his family. Dinner at Anthony’s. Brunch at Shari’s by Wandermere. Christmas Tree Elegance at the Davenport.

In a story written about him some years ago, Hastings was quoted as saying that he was blessed that he never did anything but acting. “Never had to get an honest job in my life … I think I could have gone farther (in show business) if I had handled my career differently … but my answer was work, get the money and bring up the kids.”

That’s what Tricia wanted to say about her father. Here was a man who had some measure of fame and who probably could have had more, but he valued his family’s needs even more. “He never wanted stardom. He saw from so many other friends in the business who set their sights elsewhere, how unhappy their families were. He was satisfied and grateful being a working actor who took care of his family above everything else.”

This week Tricia flew down to California to escort her mother, Joan, back to Spokane, where today they are having Thanksgiving dinner – as always – at her home, with Tricia and Jim’s daughters and their children. Bob Hastings will be present in his own way because the people who love him will be together for Thanksgiving, as they always are on this most family-centered holiday of the year.