R.I.P. Hersha Parady: ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Actress Dead At 78

Hersha Parady, best known for her role as schoolteacher Alice Garvey on Little House on the Prairie, died yesterday (Aug. 23), Deadline reports. She was 78.

The actress passed away in Norfolk, Virginia, following surgery she underwent for brain cancer meningioma a month prior. In July, her son Jonathan Peverall created a GoFundMe page to support his mother, who he said “was once full of life and energy, [and was] now struggling with basic daily activities.”

Other credentials of Parady’s include acting in CBS Afternoon Playhouse, Unsolved Mysteries, and Kenan & Kel.

According to IMDb, Parady appeared in 35 episodes over the course of the show’s nine-year-long run. She starred alongside Merlin Olsen’s Jonathan Garvey, and were introduced in the Season 4 premiere episode, “Castoffs,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House book series, the historical drama followed the Ingalls family, led by patriarch Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon) and matriarch Caroline (Karen Grassle).

THR also highlighted the Season 6 episode “May We Make Them Proud,” which aired in 1980 and was two hours long, in which Parady’s Alice ventured into the burning School for the Blind in order to save children who were still inside. She tragically dies inside, along with Adam (Linwood Boomer) and Mary Ingalls Kendall’s (Melissa Sue Anderson) infant.

In the scene, a doll was used for the infant. At the time, some viewers had thought Parady used the doll as a “battering ram.”

“They did not rig the windows to break easily and I’m not, as Michael Landon pointed out a lot, a meek, delicate woman, so when I try to bust something, I usually succeed,” she explained in an interview, noting that “it was Michael himself who first mentioned that it looked like [she] was trying to use Mary’s baby as a battering ram to bust the window.”

“So because they’d forgotten to ‘break away’ the windows, I was determined to get out whatever the cost!” she exclaimed. “In spite of the impending doom it would bring, at least I went out with a roar and not a whimper.”

She worked with the LA fire department and special effects team, and said that she “loved every minute of it.”

Her Little House co-star Alison Arngrim, who starred as Nellie Oleson, mourned the loss of Parady in a Facebook post, featuring a picture of the two of them together.

“DIVA DOWN,” she began her tribute. “Our wild, untamable, talented Hersha has left us. Rest in power.”

Little House on the Prairie is available to stream on Freevee and Peacock.