Hersha Parady Cause of Death

American actress, Hersha Parady has been reported dead. According to her family, she died on Wednesday, August 23, 2023, at the age of 78. The family shared that she had been dealing with a brain tumor which contributed to her death.

Born on  May 25, 1945, she graduated from Berea High School and acted at the Cleveland Plat House and in regional theater. She got the role of Stella in a road production of Streetcar Named Desire. 

Parady made her onscreen debut in an episode of Bearcats! and also appeared on Mannix, The Waltons, Gunsmoke spin-off, and more. Despite her roles in all these, she was best known for her role as Alice Garvey, a Walnut Grove schoolteacher on Little House on the Prairie. 

She was introduced in the show during the season-four opening episode Castoffs in September 1977. Even though she played a phenomenal role in the show, some fans shared that she used the doll that stood in for the infant as a ‘battering ram.’

“They did not rig the windows to break easily and I’m not, as Michael Landon pointed out a lot, a meek, delicate woman, so when I try to bust something, I usually succeed. It was Michael himself who first mentioned that it looked like I was trying to use Mary’s baby as a battering ram to bust the window! So because they’d forgotten to ‘break away’ the windows, I was determined to get out whatever the cost! Despite the impending doom it would bring, at least I went out with a roar and not a whimper!” Parady once said in an interview for the Little House on the Prairie Memories tribute site.