phineas wrote: 
Glad I could help.

 winter wrote: 
I sit corrected.

 phineas wrote: 
63% of all Wikipedia editors support me on that. Support rises to 91% among left-handed amnesiacs, Scrabble-addicted lepers, and Oklahoma ferret fanciers.

 winter wrote: 
Got any facts to back that up?

 JrzyTmata wrote: 
Oh, please. Those are facts. You can prove anything you like with facts.

In any case, none of them refute my thesis: Ward Cleaver was a hired killer. 

 winter wrote: 
Yeah, always smirking into his coffee cup or hiding behind the newspaper.  It makes sense.

All you wanted to know about Ward Cleaver

 phineas wrote: 
Nah. I say that for a living. Why do it for free on my day off?

Seriously: tight-lipped, controlling, goes off to some undefined office job that he never talks about, last guy you'd suspect, whereabouts unknown on Nov. 22 1963 - do the math, people. Ward Cleaver was a hired killer. 

 winter wrote: 
You just wanted to say ass sassin'...

 Proclivities wrote: 
I think it was a way to show the man was stable and family-friendly (not one of those creepy guys who isn't married and making babies by 25) but still leave him free to have romantic adventures. Couldn't be a divorced dad, couldn't be a single dad, but a widower? Sure.

I think Ward Cleaver was some kind of assassin. It would explain a LOT. 

 JrzyTmata wrote: 
Oh yeah.  I forgot that show.  It was considered "groundbreaking" in its time.

 Proclivities wrote: 
There was the show Julia in 1968. she was a young African-American woman working as a nurse. She is also a widow (her husband died in Vietnam) trying to raise a young son alone.

In Courtship of Eddie's Father, I remember them talking about the mom. I don't remember what happened to her.

 oldviolin wrote: 
Oh, yeah, "Rin Tin Tin, and how could I have forgotten "Bonanza" too.  What were they trying to tell us back then?

 oldviolin wrote: 
and Sky King...i think.

 Proclivities wrote: 

Don't forget Rin Tin Tin.

 Proclivities wrote: 
bonanza?

 Proclivities wrote: 

I think Ward sold insurance. That would account for his lack of humor.

I watched a bit of "The Andy Griffith Show" earlier today and something had occurred to me, something I had thought about before but never got a satisfactory answer to. Why did the story lines of so many TV programs have widower fathers or surrogate fathers (looking after children whose parents had died) as the main character? I can think of several off the top of my head.
• My Three Sons
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Brady Bunch
• The Courtship of Eddie's Father
• Bachelor Father
• Family Affair
• Flipper
• The Rifleman
I know that television writers often pattern their plot lines after certain demographic groups and target those groups as viewers, but were there really that many orphans or widowers back in those days? Maybe it was more acceptable back then to write in a dead mother or dead parents than it was to write in a divorced father. Maybe part of it is to show the struggles of being a single parent, but it wasn't until the 1970's that a program featured a single mother, and she was divorced, not widowed. The other thing is that only on "Andy Griffith" and "Eddie's Father" did the child ever ask about his deceased mother. Maybe it happened on other shows, but I didn't watch all of them (I particularly disliked The Brady Bunch, even as a child). Anyhow, it's just one of things I've wondered about. One other thing is: What the hell did Ward Cleaver do for a living? He always went "to the office" in his suit and tie, but he never spoke much about what he did.  Though I didn't watch that show too much either.