This week: a star of Little House on The Prairie, an Olympic showjumper and the founder of Feed My Starving Children
THE actress Katherine MacGregor, who has died aged 93, was best known as the petty, gossiping mother Harriet Oleson in the popular television series Little House on The Prairie.
Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books, the series, which ran from 1974 to 1983, told the story of the Ingalls family making a life on a small farm in Minnesota in the late 19th century. The earnest, well-meaning family was played by Michael Landon, Melissa Gilbert, Karen Grassle, and Melissa Sue Anderson, while MacGregor played one of the less sympathetic characters. Mrs Oleson owned the local shop with her long-suffering husband Nels.
While her nasty daughter Nellie Oleson was the character viewers most loved to hate , her cruel, greedy mother Harriet Oleson was just as awful.
Raised in Colorado, MacGregor began her career as a dancer in New York before shifting to acting, studying under the renowned teacher Sanford Meisner.
Her screen career consisted of small film roles and TV guest spots before she landed the role on Little House on The Prairie.
MacGregor stayed for the show's entire run along with actors Michael Landon, the show's star who died in 1991, and Melissa Gilbert, who played a young Laura Ingalls.
"She was outspoken and hilariously funny," Gilbert said of her former colleague. "A truly gifted actress as she was able to play a despicable character but with so much heart. Her Harriet Oleson was the woman our fans loved to hate. A perfect antagonist."
Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson, said MacGregor "had an extremely long and full life and is at peace ... we will all miss her".
THE Olympic showjumper Tim Stockdale, who has died aged 54, featured at the 2008 Games in Beijing and represented Great Britain on more than 50 Nations Cup teams as well as the World Equestrian Games in 2002 and the European Championships in 2009.
Stockdale was also a former British Showjumping board director and a long-standing member of the international and performance committees, an ambassador for the British Showjumping National Championships and also a long-standing committee member for Olympia Horse Show.
He broke his neck in October 2011 following a fall from a horse but was riding for Great Britain again nine months later.
This year he was still competing on the international circuit up to a month before his diagnosis.
"Tim was an incredible man and there would be very few who could hold a light to him," said Les Harris, chairman for British Showjumping.
British Showjumping chief executive Iain Graham said Stockdale's death would leave a huge hole in the sport. His support across so many different areas had been innovative and informed, he said.
THE activist Richard Proudfit, who has died aged 88, was the founder of Feed My Starving Children, an American charity that has delivered billions of nutritious meals to malnourished children worldwide.
Proudfit went to Honduras in 1982 on a medical relief mission and witnessed that country's starvation.
In 1987, he founded Feed My Starving Children, a Christian-based non-profit group that has sent more than two billion meals to children and families in 70 countries.
He assembled a group of scientists to create a food product and they settled on a mix of rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and chicken flavouring, plus vitamins and minerals; it is still used today.
Proudfit left Feed My Starving Children in 1998 to create another non-profit organisation, Kids Against Hunger.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here