By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS ó As a child, Jerry Mathers played a typical American boy growing up in the 1950s on the TV show “Leave It To Beaver.”
As an adult, Mathers’ life has been just as typically American.
He retired, gained 60 pounds and, like millions of his fans, developed type 2 diabetes.
“My doctor told me I would be dead in three to five years unless I treated my diabetes,” said Mathers, 61, who appeared in Kannapolis Wednesday to promote prescription drug assistance for poor and uninsured patients.
After four months on insulin and some serious lifestyle changes, Mathers now controls his diabetes with diet and exercise. He walks five miles a day but said he expects to need insulin again, as diabetes is a degenerative disease.
“I have health insurance,” he said. “But I know how expensive a chronic disease can be for people without it.”
Mathers appears across the country on behalf of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, which acts as a clearinghouse for 475 prescription assistance programs.
Sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, PPA doesn’t provide medication but helps people enroll in assistance programs that offer cheap or free medicines.
The group’s orange tour bus, dubbed the Help is Here Express, spent three hours at the Cabarrus Health Alliance in Kannapolis.
Mathers signed more than 150 autographs.
“She’s been dying all day to see him,” Terry Luciano, a nurse at the health alliance, said about her co-worker Ashley Goodman, who was giddy when she met Mathers.
“I love your show,” Goodman said as Mathers signed a picture of himself as the Beaver.
On their lunch break with fellow nurse LuAnn Campbell, Goodman and Luciano posed with Mathers in front of the bus.
“I think it’s great that they have a celebrity to draw people,” Goodman said. “It’s exciting.”
“Leave It To Beaver” has aired continuously since 1957, making it the longest-running scripted show in history, Mathers said.
The show airs in 80 languages in 140 countries, including Japan.
But in Japan, there are no beavers.
So the show is called “Happy Boy and His Family.”
Mathers said it took him years to figure out why people in Japanese airports called him “Happy Boy” instead of “The Beaver.”
A young Japanese girl dubbed Mathers’ lines when the show was translated. That worked well for the first few seasons, but the sitcom ran for six years and by the end, Mathers was 14 and his voice had changed.
“But I still sounded like a young Japanese girl, talking in this high voice,” he laughed.
Mathers has been a “major draw” for the PPA, spokesperson Diedtra Henderson said.
“Think about the demographics ó the people suffering from chronic disease are the same group of people who grew up watching Jerry,” Henderson said. “His childhood resonates with them, as well as his struggle with diabetes.”