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Jerry Mathers on the bombshell that upended his life in 1997
An emotional breakup hit the former child star hard.
Being a child star is weird. You're trapped in amber on television in your youth, and to many viewers all over the world, you're eternally that kid. That's just the nature of the medium. When people identify you with a character on TV, day after day, year after year, the truth blends with what's broadcasted. Jaleel White is Urkel, forever. Richard Thomas will always be John-Boy to most. And, maybe more than anyone else, Jerry Mathers will always be The Beaver.
When Leave It to Beaver ended in 1963, it's not like the show disappeared from pop culture. Instead, if anything, the show's profile kept growing as older episodes were played in re-runs. The show became a totem passed through the years, and new audiences discovered the show for decades to come.
However, the show's star, Jerry Mathers, did disappear. He stopped acting almost entirely, popping up occasionally in cameo appearances, mostly in wink-nudge references to his most famous character.
Things changed, though in the '80s. Ready to finally, fully capitalize on his work as a kid, Mathers starred in Still the Beaver, which became The New Leave It to Beaver. He was among old friends on the new show. He had a new wife, Rhonda Ghering. According to Mathers in his book ...And Jerry Mathers as The Beaver, life was good.
But then came what the actor described as a bombshell.
"My years in social and professional exile had already damaged our marriage beyond repair," he wrote. "Rhonda had married me at the start of The New Leave it To Beaver. Living with a social and professional recluse was not in her original plan. Rhonda wanted out. People think being married to a celebrity is fun, then they get fed up with the hassles of it. Rhonda found someone else.
After the divorce, Rhonda Gehring told the National Enquirer "Jerry is NOT Ward Cleaver. He is a great guy and a good husband and father but he is no Ward Cleaver."
In his book, Mathers responds, "Wow! This was so weird to me. How can I compete with a fictional character? My own wife was seeking the type of love demonstrated by my fictional father to my fictional mother."
Life, it seems, is truly stranger than fiction.
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