When Chester died on Combat!
The night Chester died on Combat, Terry cried himself to sleep.
“Not Chester,” he sobbed when his mother tried to comfort him. “I like him a lot.”
Chester, one of Terry’s favorite characters on Gunsmoke had been killed in this week‘s episode of Combat. It shook him up a lot because he went right to bed after the program ended. His mother, who had been writing a letter to his father, heard him crying in his room. Although she tried to assure him it was all make believe, that Chester hadn’t really died, Terry wasn’t buying any of it.
“The army men shot him and he died,” Terry said. “I saw it.”
“It’s just acting, son,” she said, leaning over and pulling up the blanket around his chest. “He didn’t really die. Get some sleep, okay?”
His mother kissed him on the forehead and turned off the light. His mom was right. Chester didn’t really die on Combat; the following week he was back helping Matt Dillon keep the streets of Dodge City safe.
If only the same held true for Terry’s father who was killed in Vietnam in late 1965. When it came time to go to the Ptak’s Funeral Home for the visitation, Terry remembered what his mother told him about Chester a few weeks earlier.
“It’s all make believe, right?” Terry said, as he looked down at his father in the casket. “Just like Chester.”
His mother held Terry’s hand tightly and sobbed as she looked at her husband.
Dennis Weaver, the actor who had played Chester Goode in Gunsmoke lived a long life and passed away in 2006. Terry, like his father, died young. He was killed in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.