LOS ANGELES (AP) — Conchata Ferrell, who became known for her role as Berta the housekeeper on TV’s “Two and a Half Men” after a long career as a character actor on stage and in movies, including “Mystic Pizza” and ”Network,” has died. She was 77.
Ferrell died Monday at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Los Angeles following cardiac arrest, according to publicist Cynthia Snyder.
Ferrell soldiered through more than a decade on “Two and a Half Men,” playing opposite Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer until Sheen was fired from the sitcom for erratic behavior that included publicly insulting producer Chuck Lorre.
The series, which debuted in 2003 on CBS, continued on the network with new star Ashton Kutcher until 2015. Ferrell was on board for the full run.
She was remembered by Cryer for the “joy she brought so many.”
“Berta’s gruff exterior was an invention of the writers. Chatty’s warmth and vulnerability were her real strengths,” he posted on Twitter.
In a tweet, Sheen described Ferrell as “an absolute sweetheart, a consummate pro, a genuine friend,” and called her loss painful.
Ferrell, a native of Charleston, West Virginia, and graduate of Marshall University, gained recognition and several theater awards in 1974 for her role in “The Sea Horse.” Her work in Lanford Wilson’s “Hot L Baltimore” led to a starring role in the Norman Lear sitcom of the same name.
She received two Emmy supporting actress Emmy nominations for “Two and a Half Men,” and a nod for her role as Susan Bloom on “L.A. Law.”
Ferrell’s other credits include the films “Heartland,” “True Romance” and “Erin Brockovich,” while her TV appearances came on “Good Times,” “ER,” “Grace and Frankie” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” among other series.
She is survived by her husband, Arnie Anderson, and her daughter, Samantha.
COVID-19 has taken the lives of nearly 300 West Virginians, and earlier this month, the state lost one of its most powerful and vocal social activists and musicians.
Elaine Purkey passed away Sept. 2 in Ranger, West Virginia at 71 years old.
Purkey grew up a coal miner’s daughter in the mountains of Lincoln County. She was a coal miner’s wife, a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. But much of her life was spent as a musician activist – taking part and writing songs for many of the major union strikes over the past 50 years.
Purkey was internationally known. One of her performances was featured in a PBS documentary. She played in the 2003 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and she is included in a folklife collection in the Library of Congress. But all her inspiration came from the Mountain State.
“I used the term hillbilly as a compliment,” said Rick Wilson, a native West Virginian who works with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social justice group. “She’s hardcore Southern West Virginia. And, West Virginians, you know, are almost tribal in some ways. There’s just like this real visceral connection to place. I’d have to say it wasn’t just a connection to place, but a connection of solidarity and sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged.”
Purkey learned to play guitar and sing from her family. Legend has it that as a young girl her father would put her on top of a rock to sing to whoever happened to walk by, Wilson said.
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An early photo of Elaine Purkey.
“You didn’t want to hear Elaine sing in a small room because she could just blow you away,” he said.
Wilson and Purkey were friends for over 30 years, first meeting at a coal worker strike and later bonding over their love of music.
Her song ‘One Day More’ is about the 1990-92 Ravenswood Lockout, where nearly 2,000 United Steelworkers Union members demanded safer working conditions. It became one of her most famous songs, featuring in the 2006 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album ‘Classic Labor Songs.’
It is about union workers outlasting companies by “one day” to get their demands met.
“If the company holds out 20 years, we’ll hold out one day more,” according to the lyrics.
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Listen to Elaine's introduction and performance of the song 'One Day More' at a West Virginia Folklife Program event in Kimball in 2017.
Purkey focused much of her time and songs on issues like clean water, police brutality and teacher strikes, but also lighter things, like teaching Appalachian folk songs to kids at the Big Ugly Community Center and being an active member in Leets Church of Christ in Lincoln County.
She was absorbed by her passions and had a random, yet charismatic sense of humor, Wilson said.
“We used to have a joke that her brain worked like an old-fashioned car with an AM radio driving on curvy mountain roads at night and you never knew what station she was gonna pick up,” he said.
Another friend of Purkey’s was Jeff Bosley, a recording event production engineer based in Huntington. He met Purkey through the music industry 10 years ago and described her as “fire and vinegar.”
“She never stopped, and for us to be in a position here talking about Elaine being stopped, it just, it doesn’t really compute at this point, it just doesn’t,” Bosley said. “She was like an elemental force of nature.”
Bosley recorded Purkey singing the old Hazel Dickens’ song ‘Fire in the Hole’ at the opening of the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan in 2015. Her voice echoed through the building that still bore bullet holes from one of the many labor union strikes during the mine wars years in the early 1900s.
“You can tell them in the country, tell them in the town, the miners down in Mingo laid their shovels down,” according to the ‘Fire in the Hole lyrics. “We won’t pull another pillar, load another ton, or lift another finger till the union we have won.”
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Listen to Elaine sing 'Fire in the Hole.' Recorded by the Friendly Neighbor Show.
“I think Elaine was really singing about what she felt, what her thoughts were and what her experiences were,” Bosley said. “It’s just so sincere and come straight from the heart.”
Purkey truly believed in West Virginia and its ability to persevere, much like her song says in ‘One Day More’, Wilson said.
“I think Elaine’s advice to us in these days, which are really dark in more ways than one, would be to hold out one day more,” he said.
If you have a loved one who has passed away from COVID-19 and you would like us to remember them, reach out at news@wvpublic.org.
American soul singer legend and West Virginia native Bill Withers has died at 81 of heart complications, unrelated to coronavirus, according to the Associated Press. In a statement released to the AP, Withers’ family said he died Monday in Los Angeles.
“Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean On Me” and “Lovely Day” were just a few of the hits Withers wrote and sang during the peak of his career in the 70s and 80s — songs that have stood the test of time, most recently with people referencing “Lean On Me” as an anthem for hope during the coronavirus pandemic.
Withers was a three-time Grammy Award winner and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
“I’m not a virtuoso, but I was able to write songs that people could identify with. I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Fork, West Virginia,” Withers told Rolling Stone in 2015.
He was born in 1938, the last of 6 children, in the coal mining town of Slab Fork in Raleigh County. In some ways his childhood was similar to many West Virginians, with his family historically working in the coal mines, but in other ways it was much different.
“My family lived right beside the railroad track, and so all the white people live on one side of the railroad track and all black people are on the other side of the railroad track,” Withers said in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 2007.
Withers said much of his music was inspired by his childhood and his time spent growing up in West Virginia.
“You know, I think we all become the composite of the places we’ve been and the people we’ve met,” he said. “And I think wherever you grow up, you know, you can go somewhere else but you never really leave that place.”
The song “Grandma’s Hands” was about his grandma, who he said he remembered sitting on the porch, singing gospel songs and clapping her hands.
“She was the most encouraging person in my life,” he said. “When you’ve got people all around you telling you, ‘you can’t do nothing,’ you need somebody who tells you can.”
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The song “Lean On Me” was also heavily influenced by Withers’ childhood in West Virginia. The song includes the lyrics, “Lean on me when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend.”
“I remember we had a phone and the people across the street had a refrigerator, so they gave us ice and they used our phone,” Withers said about his neighborhood in West Virginia. “Just the economics made people kind of share and and help each other
After 14 years in the music industry, Withers abruptly departed in 1985 upon disagreements with his label Columbia Records, who he was with for nine years after a rocky relationship with his first label Sussex Records. He entered into an early retirement, focusing his time on his family, never returning to the industry.
However, he did give one spoken-word performance in his retirement at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2007.
“Bill has become a beacon and an icon – not just because of his music but for his dedication to caring about people,” according to a Facebook post from the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. “To that end, “Lean on Me” is an anthem whose time has clearly come again. Very few need to be reminded of his contributions to American music, and I have no doubts that you will continue to hear his magical songs many, many times in the future.”
Withers is survived by his wife, Marcia and children, Todd and Kori.
This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.
Musician and artist Daniel Johnston was known for eccentric and sometimes harrowing pop songs colored by childlike innocence and romantic longing. His life and work have been seen as an inspiration to many artists and musicians.
Johnston was found dead at home Wednesday morning at the age of 58. According to a statement from his family, he died of natural causes.
Born in Sacramento, California and raised in New Cumberland, West Virginia, Johnston was attracted early on to the pop sounds of groups like The Beatles. In high school, he began making lo-fi recordings using a piano, a chord organ and microphones running through a boombox.
Johnston briefly attended school at a christian college in Texas before enrolling in an art program at the East Liverpool, Ohio branch of Kent State University.
With a first LP, Songs of Pain, released in 1981, Johnston went on to record and release at least 17 more full-length solo albums — in addition to numerous side projects and collaborations with other artists. His 1983 release, Hi, How Are You? gained worlwide attention when Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was photographed wearing a t-shirt of the album cover.
After some success, Johnston would eventually land full time back in Texas.
His music career and mental health struggles were the subject of the 2006 feature-length documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. A 2016 graphic novel, The Incantations of Daniel Johnston — written by West Virginia native Scott McClanahan and illustrated by Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo — outlined a similar narrative.
Johnston’s visual artwork included an iconic frog-like creature known as “Jeremiah the Innocent” and adaptations of comic book characters like Captain America.
A 2004 tribute album featured artists such as Beck, Flaming Lips and Tom Waits.
B.E. Taylor, a musician whose annual Christmas concerts and recordings made him well known in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is dead of complications from brain cancer at age 65.
The general manager of a funeral home where Taylor lived in Wheeling, West Virginia, confirmed that he died Sunday. Funeral arrangements will be private.
The Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, native’s series of popular Christmas recordings began in 1991 and led to seasonal shows that drew thousands.
A family spokesman says he was working on “B.E. Taylor Christmas 4” at the time of his death.
He was a popular performer in Pittsburgh in the 1980s, partly on the strength of the song, “Vitamin L.”
Shelley Riley Moore, the former first lady of West Virginia for 12 years and mother of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, has died. She was 88.
Moore was born in Florida and met her husband, future Gov. Arch Moore, while she attended West Virginia University.
After graduating from college, she worked as a schoolteacher, and then she became a full-time mother and partner in her husband’s political career, first as a congressman, and later governor.
She served as first lady from 1969 to 1977 and 1985 to 1989, when her husband lost re-election amid corruption allegations.
In a statement, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito and her siblings remember their mother’s warmth and charm:
“Our mother was a wonderful, warm, and loving person. She loved us and our children intensely, and she passionately loved her husband Arch, with whom she shared a beautiful marriage of 65 years. “Mom matched an uplifting sense of humor with a genuine ability to listen and connect, traits that made everyone around her know they mattered. “She was an ardent fan of West Virginia University, especially its marching band, the Pride of West Virginia. She was deeply honored to serve as First Lady of West Virginia for 12 years. Her loyalty to her family and her friends was unmatched. We miss her warm and comforting touch, but know that she is at peace with the Lord at her side.”
Funeral Arrangements:
The family will welcome visitors in Charleston in the Rotunda at the University of Charleston on Friday, September 19, 2014, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. In Moundsville, visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, September 19, at Grisell Funeral Home (400 Jefferson Avenue, Moundsville, WV).
On Saturday, the funeral service for Shelley will begin at 11 a.m. at Simpson United Methodist Church in Moundsville (800 7th Street). The family will receive visitors at 9:30 a.m. at the Church. A private graveside service will follow.
