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Vicki Lawrence interview sparks new career apex

May 10, 2026May 10, 2026 Zach Cooley No Comments

On Saturday, May 9, an Emmy-winning television legend will perform her famous Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two-Woman Show at the Newton Performing Arts Center in Newton, North Carolina. Both the matinee at 3:00 p.m. and the 7:00 p.m. evening performances are nearly sold out. The Newton stop has become an annual destination for the Mama’s Family and Carol Burnett Show star. “The Carolinas are truly beautiful,” Lawrence said during a May 1 telephone interview. “They really are a world of their own.” And Mama fits into that world as everyone’s favorite grandmother. So, how does a native Californian develop the epitome of a Southern senior? “I had a Southern mother-in-law for a minute when I was very young,” she noted. “Plus, I used to travel the country doing summer stock. I thought those Texans were kidding me with those accents.” Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two-Woman Show was created in 2001 after the unprecedented ratings of a Carol Burnett Show reunion special went through the roof. The live production is directed by her son, Garrett Schultz. He and sister Courtney are Lawrence’s two children from her 50-year marriage to CBS makeup artist Al Schultz, who passed away in 2024. Lawrence’s show, which has toured the nation for the last quarter-century, features a pair of 45- to 60-minute acts. First, the 77-year-old lifelong Californian delivers the story of her amazing life and career in a stand-up comedy-style format, where she tells the infamous story of connecting with Carol Burnett via a fan letter and look-alike photo. “These are great old show-business stories,” offered the comedy legend. “The further away I get from these stories, the more I realize they would never happen again.” Fans will also get to hear her sing her 1972 No. 1 hit, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” as well as the original lyrics to the Mama’s Family theme song. Lawrence actually wrote the lyrics to “Bless My Happy Home,” but only an instrumental theme was used on the show, with The Carol Burnett Show orchestra leader Peter Matz receiving sole credit. Lawrence’s uncanny resemblance to Carol Burnett landed her a role on the iconic variety show as Burnett’s younger sister in the “Carol and Sis” sketches. “The Family” sketches would eventually give her the alter ego of Thelma “Mama” Harper, the character she has played for more than a half-century. Originally, the part of Mama was written for Burnett. However, it was the character of Eunice that the now-93-year-old star wanted to play. She asked producers to give Lawrence the role that would define her career. Lawrence won an Emmy for her work on The Carol Burnett Show in 1976, was nominated for an Emmy for playing Mama in the TV movie Eunice, and starred in Mama’s Family from 1983 to 1985 on NBC, then in syndication from 1986 to 1990. “I used to think Mama was around 69 or 70, but the older I get, the more I think she is much older than that,” she said with a laugh. “I love bawdy women like Lucille Ball and Betty White, probably because I am one of them. Mama certainly is, too.” The second half of the show is all Mama. It is evident that both she and Vicki are ageless in their own way. “The older I get, the more I agree with her,” Lawrence said with a laugh. “I think that if you live to a certain age, you’ve earned the right to say what you think, and that’s what Mama does.” Lawrence knew she couldn’t do a live show without Mama, who is adored the world over. However, that presented the comedienne with the challenge of bringing the beloved character into the 21st century and all its modern-day problems. As a result, Mama’s half of the show is ever-changing. “She has to deal with all this stuff that’s going on now,” she explained. “It’s fun to keep her on top of these things she’s having trouble dealing with.” Mama’s half of the show will also include a rap, answers to pre-written questions from the audience and, of course, plenty of side-splitting laughter. Tickets are selling fast, but to grab one of the remaining seats, please visit https://ncauditorium.com/vickilawrence. Interviewing Emmy winner Vicki Lawrence represented a new career pinnacle for me. I have adored her since I was 3 years old. I still remember seeing her burst onto the set of Win, Lose or Draw with that glorious red hair and unmistakable energy. From there, I watched her faithfully on the daily parade of syndicated game shows, from the various incarnations of Pyramid to the Password franchise, always rooting for her team to win. One of my favorite things was watching her banter back and forth with her good friend Dick Clark. “I loved those games, and I did a lot of them,” Lawrence told me during our May 2 phone interview. “He was a very good friend, and I learned to dance from watching his American Bandstand show.” It was on American Bandstand that Lawrence, in 1972, received her one and only gold record for her No. 1 single, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Though there is an infamous clip of Carol Burnett presenting her with the award, Lawrence quickly clarified that it was Clark who first handed her the honor. “I remember they wouldn’t let me sing the song on the show until it became a hit,” she recalled. “It would have helped the record to go ahead and sing it.” Her daytime talk show, Vicki!, which debuted years before Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres found enormous success with a similar happy, celebrity-oriented style. In my opinion, Lawrence pioneered that format, yet history often forgets her role in it. It was difficult for me to imagine that she could experience that oversight without bitterness. “I did go through a period of that,” she admitted candidly. “It was a very depressing period of my life, but I…

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Missing my Dad at Christmas

December 24, 2025December 16, 2025 Zach Cooley No Comments

It is Christmas Eve. Growing up, I looked forward to this day more than any other. It was when my mother, my sister, and I would gather to celebrate Christmas together as a family. Those memories feel even more precious now, having lost my father. When I interviewed him three years ago for his 80th birthday on my podcast, he told me that some of the happiest moments of his life were our Christmas Eve celebrations. “Your mother always knew how to take Christmas to the next level,” he recalled with a smile. “It may have been a little overkill, but it sure was a lot of fun.” Now more than ever, I am grateful to have my beautiful wife, daughter, sister, and mother with me during a holiday that is extraordinarily bittersweet for all of us. This year has carried its share of loss. Both my sister and I lost our longtime dogs—treasured “grand-puppies” to my father. Now that he has joined them in the afterlife, I find myself holding even tighter to everything he loved about Christmas. Just as our tree was always overflowing with gifts, so too was the abundance of our holiday table. My mother would make her famous twice-baked potatoes, and my father would be outside grilling his legendary steaks. A Christmas Carol has long been a favorite story in our family, and Dad would inevitably come in from the bitter cold—where he’d been tending the grill—announcing that he was presenting us with our “annual Christmas goose.” It was the best meal of the year, every year. After dinner, we would settle in to watch one of the many film versions of Dickens’ classic. My father could quote the story flawlessly, delivering lines in his rich, commanding voice that never failed to make us laugh. When it came to gifts, my father was always practical and generous. Once I received my first handicapped van in 2006, he would have certificates made up entitling me to one free tank of gas, a town tag, an oil change, or a month of car insurance paid. Before that, he made sure I never ran out of printer ink or supplies for my writing. Buying gifts for him, however, was always more of a challenge. For many years, Dad worked out of town as the chief of police in Vinton, staying in an apartment during the week and coming home only on weekends. As a result, he appreciated gifts that spared him grocery shopping—large boxes of assorted oatmeal or an array of hot sauces, the hotter the better. In his retirement years, he especially enjoyed receiving a bottle of New River Red wine from West Wind Winery here in Wythe County, which I happily sent home with him to Myrtle Beach each Christmas. This past year, his friend, former Sheriff Charles Foster, narrated a documentary film I produced based on the book I published nine years ago about my father’s law enforcement career. I hope to have the film fully polished and ready for public viewing within the next year, but I am deeply grateful that my father was able to see it first, and approve of it, just as he did with the book in 2016. Herb Cooley: The Law Enforcement Legacy of My Father means more to me than anything I have ever accomplished, especially now that I no longer have him to share stories with or make new memories. As we look toward the future, I am thankful for the traditions I’ve started with my own family. Dickens’ timeless story remains central to our Christmas rituals. Each year, I read A Christmas Carol aloud to my wife and daughter, and we always try to attend a live performance or find a new interpretation of the tale. Although we were unsuccessful this year, we have cherished many trips to see the production at Barter Theatre with my mother. At home, we watch nearly every film version available, my obsession beginning, of course, with Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol. This year, we are also deeply missing our dog Sophie, whom we had to put down in March at the age of 14. We used to take her to the free Christmas light display at Felts Park, presented by High Country Lights. This year, we simply couldn’t bring ourselves to go. It’s my father’s hometown, and it was a place filled with memories of both Dad and Sophie. I remember taking Mom and Dad there once. Dad was delighted and told everyone how wonderful it was. Seeing his joy made me incredibly happy. Sophie’s absence also made our annual family portrait feel incomplete, and for the first time, our Christmas cards were too painful to send. As a very close family of three, Emily, Bella, and I are still finding our footing without Pop and Sophie. We are doing our best to cling to one another, fully aware now that life is finite and time is far more precious than we ever truly understand. Christmas, like every other day, will never be the same without my father. But we will always treasure the memories of him as the heart of our family, especially during the holidays. We will never forget.

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Beloved Wythe teacher and friend passes away

July 30, 2025July 30, 2025 Zach Cooley 7 Comments

The reality that my dear friend Frances Watson has passed away still hasn’t fully sunk in. Even though she lived 82 years, she strikes me as someone who was too young to leave this world. That’s because Frances was ageless. She was the same vibrant, witty, and kind-hearted person from the very first time I remember meeting her—early in my own life, which has now spanned over 40 years. I never had her as a teacher at Spiller Primary School, but everyone wished they had her. And it wasn’t just because she was beloved—it was because she made every moment feel like something special. Frances didn’t need a school-wide play for her students to experience joy. She put on plays—with her own class, no less—in front of the entire school. I can still remember being in second grade, obsessed with the story The True Story of the Three Little Pigs—the one where Alexander T. Wolf explains how he was framed. And who do you think played the wrongly-accused, over-the-top wolf, pleading his innocence in our school’s version? Frances, of course. Larger than life. Stealing the show. And then there was third grade, when Billy Ray Cyrus’s Achy Breaky Heart was topping the charts. Frances’s class did a pantomime of that song, with the student playing Billy Ray picking Frances from the audience to dance with him. For 60 years, she and her husband Graham ran one of the finest farms in the county from their home in Max Meadows. I’ll never forget one day when she walked past me in the lunchroom and saw that I hadn’t touched my milk. “You’d better drink that milk,” she said, looking me dead in the eye. “That cow gave its life so you could have that milk today.” Needless to say, I left lunch with a very dry, very empty milk carton. But it was later in life that I was lucky enough to become Frances’s friend. We bonded over our support for the Wythe County Public Library, and through that shared passion, we met our mutual friend Anita Libby. It was Anita who called me to say that Frances had taken a fall and wasn’t expected to live another 24 hours. And it was Anita who first told me that Frances had passed. I called her back immediately to offer my deepest condolences, because Frances wasn’t just a friend to Anita—she was like a sister. And Frances proudly called Anita the same. Just a few months ago, Frances told me she wanted to attend an event at the Millwald Theatre with me. I promised her we’d make it happen. I also promised her a part in the stage play I’ve been working on, based on my first novel in 17 years, Open Secret. I wrote a role just for her—a sister character named Frida, who would appear opposite the main character, to be played by Anita. When I sent Frances an early draft of the script, she raved about it. “What an honor it would be to be in your first play,” she wrote to me. “I absolutely loved the part. Because, as you know, Anita is like my sister, and I love telling her what to do.” I’m so sorry I let you down, dear friend. I’m sorry we never made it to that Millwald show together. I’m sorry you never got to be in the play. But rest assured—it will not happen without you. I’m sorry you never got to read the book with the character I wrote for you. I’m sorry I never got to sign you a copy. There was no bigger supporter of the arts in Wythe County than Frances Watson. She championed the Millwald Theatre. She never missed a show when my wife sang at the Bolling Wilson Hotel. I remember once after my wife sang, Frances came up and said, “If you sang that well, honey,—you deserve a little bit of wine.” Then she produced a goblet bigger than a fishbowl, drained the contents of her bottle into it, and offered it to my wife. “You realize if you drink that,” I warned her, “you won’t be able to drive us home… or get through your next song.” It was just Frances being Frances—joyfully generous, unapologetically full of life. She was ageless because she never stopped living. You wouldn’t have known—just two days before her passing—that she was on the verge of a brain bleed. You wouldn’t have guessed she was 82. She was vibrant until the end. And she wanted the people around her to be just as alive. From the thousands of students she inspired, to her beloved grandchildren, to her many family members and friends—Frances leaves a void that no one else could ever fill. When I think of her, I think of sayings like: “Dance like nobody’s watching.” “Live every moment like it’s your last.” Except Frances didn’t dance like no one was watching. She wanted everyone watching—not for attention, but to show us all how to squeeze every drop out of life. No one lived a fuller life than Frances. And no one set a better example of how to seize every moment we’re given. So from now on: When I attend a Millwald Theatre show… When my wife reaches for a sip of wine… When I sign a copy of Open Secret… …those things will be done in memory of Frances Watson. I know that when I’m singing loudly to my favorite song, or laughing a little too hard at a friend’s joke—Frances will be there. In spirit. In laughter. In joy. And in every moment we choose to truly live.

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