Michael Landon fans unveil memorial to late TV star in Collingswood

COLLINGSWOOD - When a speaker fought to hold back tears at a ceremony here, the audience looked on with shared emotions.

It didn’t matter that Anne Jumaucourt, who had traveled here from Paris, was addressing her American listeners in French.

Everyone got her message: a love for the late Michael Landon, the actor-director with roots in Collingswood.

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About 30 Landon fans gathered Saturday to unveil a memorial bench and plaque in Newton Lake Park, across the street from Landon’s childhood home.

The bench is off South Newton Lake Drive at Chelsea Avenue.

Remembering Michael Landon

“We wanted to do it to honor Mr. Landon and make sure people didn’t forget about him,” said Marla Fair, one of three Ohio women who led a three-year, $5,000-plus effort to put the bench in a Camden County park.

“We wanted a place for fans to come,” said Fair, who noted participants also came from as far away as Texas and Florida.

The fans celebrated Landon’s memory with speeches, songs and poems that stretched over some 90 minutes on a rainy afternoon.

Speakers competed with the roar of low-flying planes as they delivered anecdotes about Landon and messages from his family members and Hollywood friends.

Michael Landon was Eugene Orowitz before stardom

“It all started here on the banks of Newton Creek,” Fair said of Landon, who moved from New York to Collingswood as 4-year-old Eugene Orowitz.

The local boy moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Collingswood High School in 1954. He changed his name and went on to star in TV shows known to viewers around the world for their wholesome content, including “Bonanza,” “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven.”

Landon, also a writer and producer, was 54 when he died of cancer in 1991.

“His legacy’s just huge,” said Fair.

The ceremony included a collage of Landon photos, as well as Landon pins, bookmarks and mugs.

But it also had an undercurrent of sadness, with several speakers noting the park was a haven during Landon’s unhappy childhood with a mentally unstable mother.

“If, like me, you’ve been to Collingswood, all the paths lead to Michael Landon's boyhood home on South Newton Lake Drive,” Fair told her listeners.

Landon fans: Childhood house an unhappy home

“As you look at that house, you cannot help but think of everything that went on inside those four walls, of the grief, pain and hopelessness that young Eugene must have felt,” she said.

“Across the street from that house is a lake and … a dock with a worn-out wooden bench,” Fair continued.

“According to his sister and others, young Eugene often ran to that dock, to that lake, to escape.”

The fans, who also released butterflies to symbolize Landon as “a flash of beauty,” originally wanted the bench to face their idol’s former home. It was turned the other direction at the request of the house’s owner, who did not want to encourage more strangers to knock at the door.

Next on the fans’ agenda: They will try to have the U.S. Postal Service issue a stamp in Landon’s honor.

“I want a new dock on Newton Lake, where little boys from Collingswood can go to dream and to fish,” added Fair. “I'd like a bronze statue next to it, but that's a big like and maybe a bigger dream.”

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Reach him at jwalsh@cpsj.com.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Michael Landon fans honor a TV star with roots in Collingswood