Jerry Mathers

There have been some health bumps along the way. After Leave It to Beaver went off the air, Mathers discovered he had psoriasis and has done some events for the National Psoriasis Foundation. When he started a catering business in the late 1980s, he gained a significant amount of weight. His doctor, a personal friend, noticed the weight gain and repeatedly urged him get a physical. He resisted, saying he felt fine.

"Finally, she got me with the magic words: For Christmas I'm going to give you a free physical," he laughed. A few days later he learned his blood sugar was over 700 and he had full-blown type 2 diabetes. "My doctor asked me if I'd like to see my kids graduate from high school. She said, 'You'll be dead in a few years unless you do something about it right now.' " He lost 60 pounds and now walks or runs an hour a day on a trail near his home in Southern California.

He recently appeared in the American Academy of Neurology Foundation's patient education video and handbook, "Diabetic Nerve Pain: A Guide for Patients and Families."

Leave It to Beaver has never been off the air, Mathers said, and plays in 46 languages around the world. Nearly 20 years after the show ended, a made-for television movie, Still the Beaver, aired on CBS. That was followed by the series Still the Beaver on the Disney Channel, and later The New Leave It to Beaver show on TBS. The shows featured most of the original cast, including Mathers, who played a divorced, out-of-work dad.

The cast now

Mathers' television mom, Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver), died last year at age 94. "She was like your favorite teacher," Mathers recalled. "She was the sweetest person and she was the nicest person. I'd always call her on her birthday and she'd call me on mine."

His television dad, Hugh Beaumont (Ward Cleaver), died in 1982.

Mathers remains good friends with the rest of the cast, including Tony Dow (big brother Wally), who became a sculptor after his Hollywood directing career wound down, and Ken Osmond (the weasely Eddie Haskell), a retired Los Angeles police officer. Frank Bank (Wally's friend Lumpy Rutherford) is now an investment adviser who handles some of Mathers' retirement accounts. Stephen Talbot (Beaver's friend Gilbert Bates) is now a PBS documentary filmmaker.

In 2007, when he was 59, Mathers made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning musical Hairspray as Wilbur Turnblad, Edna Turnblad's husband. The dancing and singing was physically demanding with two matinees a week. If he hadn't improved his health and lost weight he wouldn't have been able to accept the role, he said. "That's the pinnacle for actors," he said. "It was really fun, and it's something I really wanted to do. It's like the cherry on top of the soda."

These days, he stays busy with acting work and personal appearances, where he talks about television in the 1950s and how it has changed. "I don't think a lot of people realize the influence TV has on our kids," he said. "Kids take a lot of their cues from it in their dress and their conduct."

Mathers married his companion of five years, Teresa Modnick, this year. It is his third marriage. He has three children: Noah, 33, who does sound work for television and movies; Mercedes, 29, who works in human resources for a reality television company; and Gretchen, 26, a school administrator.

A second book is in the works for Mathers (his first, And Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, was published in 1998), which will catch people up with his life as well as get the word out about diabetes. "The people I'm really trying to reach," he said, "are the people who were like me and thought they didn't have to worry about it. I found out how wrong I was."

Kitty Bennett is a news researcher and writer based in St. Petersburg, Fla.