'Guiding Light' says goodbye with final episode

By April Phillips
Correspondent

The light from Springfield that has been a comforting beacon to millions of Americans goes out for good today. Local fans of "Guiding Light," the longest-running drama in television and radio history, are mourning the loss of characters they've known for decades.

"I'm so distressed," said Estelle Tighe, an 84-year-old Norfolk native who began listening to the show with her grandmother from the start of its run. "It feels like a part of my family has gone away."

Emotions are running high for fans of the series that was created by Irna Phillips and nurtured by Agnes Nixon - the queen of daytime drama who also created "All My Children" and "One Life to Live."

"Guiding Light" debuted on NBC radio in 1937 as a 15-minute serial, then moved to CBS television on June 30, 1952. In 1968, "GL" expanded to 30 minutes and, in 1977, became a full hour. Once there were a dozen or so daytime soaps on the TV networks - now there will be seven.

"GL's" loyal followers appreciate the show for the very reasons that many speculate younger viewers have tuned out.

" 'Guiding Light' has always been more realistic than any other soap," said 32-year-old Celena Pope of Severn, N.C. She said that although most people her age watch more sensational soaps, if they watch any at all, "Guiding Light's" traditional focus appeals to her.

" 'Guiding Light' reminds us every day that family is where the heart is, or where it should be," she said.

The family at the core of the show was the Bauers, but over the decades the Spaulding, Lewis and Cooper clans also have helped populate the mythical towns where the drama took place.

One Virginia Beach woman has a unique perspective on "GL" story lines and the risks they took. Gillian Spencer played Robin Lang Holden Fletcher on the series from 1964 to 1967. A stage actress, she was drawn to the fact that soaps were filmed live on stage. However, in her second year on the show, she was certain she was going to be fired.

"I was pregnant with my son Christopher," Spencer said. "They did not show pregnancy on television back then, but Agnes Nixon took a big chance and said, 'Let's write it in.' "

Naturally, the onscreen pregnancy didn't go smoothly. Spencer's character was in a tumultuous marriage to Paul, whose teenage son Johnny was a constant source of stress. (Step-parenting was another thorny issue the show tackled.) In the show, a pregnant Robin fell off a chair while cleaning Johnny's room and suffered a miscarriage. Depressed, she eventually threw herself in front of a speeding car and was killed instantly.

Spencer's character wasn't miraculously resurrected, a common device on the soaps, but she did continue to have a career acting in other daytime dramas.

Later, she went to the other side of the camera and worked as a writer for numerous soaps, including "GL."

Paul Lankford, 62, of Virginia Beach unabashedly professes his love for "Guiding Light," and he credits the show for helping shape his future career.

Growing up in Franklin, Lankford had a genetic condition that left him sapped of energy. Several times he was at death's door, and once he died on a surgeon's table but was brought back from the brink. Even when he was relatively healthy, he had to be careful because stress could cause his body to shut down.

He'd come home from school for lunch every day, and his mother made him lie down for a while before returning to class. Although his mother didn't watch, she had "GL" on in the living room where Lankford rested.

"The 'Guiding Light' came on at 12:45, and there were two boys on the show who were my age: Ed and Ricky Bauer - they're still there," he said.

Lankford said he thought that, being in a small town, everyone tried to keep up appearances and no one ever knew the details of other people's lives.

"It was just a facade," he said, "and I was intrigued because on the show, it was like real life and you could see what was really going on. As a child in a backwater town, we were always waiting for something to happen. We didn't know it was all going on around us behind closed doors."

As he became hooked on "Guiding Light," he also became engrossed in the world's great literature. When he wasn't watching the program, he was reading "Les Miserables" and "Wuthering Heights." As he went on to college and eventually became an award-winning high school English teacher, he realized that his favorite soap explored many of the same themes as great literary works. Today he will tune in for the last page, and he's happy with the way the writers, producers and actors have handled the final chapter.

"I realized this saga is ending, but it's almost like Dickens because they're tying all the loose ends together and bringing back old characters to provide closure."

Lankford may have bittersweet feelings about the end of "GL's" run, but others, like Tighe, are hopping mad.

"I was really going to tell them off," she said, referring to CBS and its decision to cancel the show. "I was so angry, but I guess there's no use in getting mad."

Tighe has lived through plenty of real-life drama, including sitting in the auditorium of Norfolk's Maury High School and listening to a radio broadcast of Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan. And her parents woke her up in the middle of the night as the family barely escaped a hurricane bearing down on the Willoughby section of Norfolk.

Through it all, "Guiding Light" was a constant in her life, and she said she's not sure how to say goodbye to characters who feel like family.

When Pope went to college at East Carolina University, she immediately bonded with a dorm mate who was a "GL" fan. That connection became the impetus for a solid friendship.

Pope is also grieving the loss of characters she knows so well.

"I have loved with them, laughed with them, celebrated with them and cried with them through their own life events year after year. I have grown up with those characters, so it's very easy for us fans to feel as if we know them and think of them as part of our families. When it's off, we will grieve and miss them."

Lankford sounded wistful as he summed up his feelings about today's finale: "I will miss those characters, and I hope they all live happily ever after somewhere in Springfield."

April Phillips, apes1@cox.net