Ken Howard, TV’s ‘White Shadow’, Dies At 71 [Video]

Ken Howard, best known as the star of The White Shadow, died Wednesday. He was 71.

A cause of death wasn't immediately announced.

Ken, who was the current national president of SAG-AFTRA, also had roles in 30 Rock, the HBO movie Grey Gardens (for which he won an Emmy), Dynasty and, most recently, The Wedding Ringer and Joy. But for me, he'll always be The White Shadow.

From 1978-1981, Ken was the star of The White Shadow, a CBS dramedy about the white coach of an inner city high school's basketball team. It was a groundbreaking show in many ways: 1) not many shows combined humor with drama back then, and 2) it was one of a few TV shows in the '70s to have a multi-ethnic cast, one which paralleled the make up of my own neighborhood.

The White Shadow tackled challenging themes like racial prejudice, homosexuality, violence, crime, and the difficulty of growing up in a neighborhood where opportunities to escape were few and far between.

In this scene, Howard's character thwarts a school shooting, a not-so-common occurence in most of America back then, but one I related to after a classmate of mine was busted for having a hand gun in his locker.

I'm not sure the show ever got the credit it deserved for being ahead of its time in a lot of ways, but I remember it because the Carver High School basketball team and its interesting melting pot of personalities, in a lot of ways, reminded me of my own high school basketball team. Even though our coach wasn't white, our coach Norwaine Reed, taught us a lot of the same life lessons taught by Ken Howard's Coach Reeves. (In the series, the Coach Reeves character had become a coach after an injury ended his career with the Chicago Bulls, which was the same Bulls that had cut our coach the year before, prompting him to get into coaching)

Ken Howard is survived by his wife, Linda Fetters Howard, and three stepchildren.

A few years ago, Howard talked about the show and its legacy when a DVD of the series was released.