Windom of Heaven

William Windom, best remembered as the guy who was very happy getting Cabot Cove, Maine to say “Ah,” has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. After leaving Zork State/The College of Middle Earth/Williams College, Windom put his Midwestern local news anchor looks to use after the war on radio, TV and the stage. He was the prosecutor slapping around Gregory Peck’s inept Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, starred as the major in Five Characters in Search of an Exit, possibly the worst-ever episode of The Twilight Zone, he was Commodore Matt Decker who died trying to defeat the planet killer in The Doomsday Machine on Star Trek, but mostly he was Dr. Seth Hazlitt, friend of Jessica Fletcher and archnemesis of Amos Tupper, on Murder She, Wrote. And of course he pretended to be Ray Krebb’s father Amos on Dallas, before revealing Jock was really Ray’s father, elevating Ray from ranchhand to bastard scion and potential heir to the Ewing Oil fortune and meaning that all those times Ray was rolling around in the hayloft with Lucy, Gary’s little girl, he was really nailing his own niece.