October 25 sees Marion Ross turn 95 years old and while it’s been nothing but Happy Days for the actress for some time, it wasn’t always like that. There was a time when Ross found herself without her partner and without enough money to afford basic household items. Today, her situation couldn’t be more different, as she’s immortalized with a statue in her hometown.
Ross was born in 1928 in Watertown, Minnesota, and her family would go on to plant roots in Albert Lea, further south in the state. Her parents, originally from Canada, had lived through the Great Depression, and so Ross witnessed her mother’s tireless work ethic and made it part of her own conduct, a choice that would help Ross immeasurably later in life.
Having it all figured out at a young age
Ross knew she wanted to make a name for herself – and she did literally that when she changed her name from its original “Marian” to the “Marion” fans now know so well. The young Ms. Ross, already thinking ahead, believed the new spelling would look better on a marquee.
InForum claims that Ross realized it was fame, in particular, that she wanted for herself after a very unexpected and daring rescue. Allegedly, the outlet claims, citing Ross’s son Jim Meskimen, she was walking around one winter day when she saw a dog struggling in a hole in the frozen Fountain Lake. “She got down on her stomach near the hole and pulled him out,” InForum reports Jim sharing. A man nearby then kicked out at the dog to get the canine moving so it wouldn’t freeze anyway.
The story goes that the rescue made the local paper and gave Ross a taste of the spotlight she realized she quite liked, and so she looked through a Who’s Who? book at the Albert Lea library. “I always wondered how some of the people in the book became so popular. So, I decided that I wanted to be an actress and become someone famous, too,” she mused.
Marion Ross turns 95 after climbing out of poverty, now celebrated with her very own statue
If Ross sometimes feels synonymous with Happy Days as a whole, it might be because she’s been in every single episode, a feat shared only by Henry Winkler and Tom Bosley. But this followed a crippling dry spell exacerbated by a broken family situation. In 1951, Ross married Freeman Meskimen, the father of her two children, including future comedian Jim Meskimen. But the two divorced in 1969.
This coincided with a period of struggle in her acting career. “Nobody had a job [for me], and I had two small children,” she recalled in an interview with Closer Weekly. Her kids noticed something was amiss and once, Jim asked her why they did not own a hairdryer. Ross answered, “We can’t afford it.”
Marion Cunningham was a beloved motherly figure to a nation in one of the most successful shows of the ’70s and she became the force that revived Ross’s career and gave her family a sense of security they had long missed. That was when Ross was 46. Now, at 95, Marion Ross is still flourishing and staying as lively as ever.
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In fact, just two summers ago, Ross returned to her beloved hometown of Albert Lea for the unveiling of a statue in her honor. All the while, Ross remained shocked at such a tribute and thought only of how she could help the place she called home. “Well, I’m so impressed! I’m so impressed that the hometown wants to bother with me,” Ross said. “I think it’s just really extraordinary because I want everybody in the world to know about Albert Lea, Minnesota. It’s a small town, but it’s a wonderful place to have grown up and gone to school!”
Just as Ross wanted to support her community, the community came together to make this life-sized bronze artwork a reality; the statue now stands just outside the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center, inspiring the next generation of creatives to imagine their names on a marquee.
