*Fans of the classic 1970’s sitcom “What’s Happening” may not know that series star Fred “Rerun” Berry became a preacher after his stint on the series, according to I Love Old School Music.
via LA Times:
[Fred Rerun] Berry was an unpaid associate minister and evangelist at the Little Shiloh Church on the outskirts of Huntsville, Ala., where he had moved from Los Angeles a year and a half earlier.
“I’d been going to churches for the past 12 years, to all kinds of services, but when I walked in here [in his church], I felt the power of God,” [Berry] told the Los Angeles Sentinel. “I didn’t want to leave.”
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?DEBUT: ‘What’s Happening!!’ premiered 43 years ago tonight, August 5, 1976, on ABC pic.twitter.com/2OZnfj4WH6
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) August 6, 2019
Prior to his death is, Berry opened up about his drug and alcohol addiction and road to recovery.
“I was a millionaire by the time I was 29,” he told People magazine in 1996, “but then the stress of success got to me. The fat jokes got to me. And I got heavily into drugs and alcohol.”
Berry said in another 1996 interview that he had been “experimenting with drugs and alcohol” since he was a teenager, and as he became more successful, he could afford more drugs.
He told the Cincinnati Call and Post that the was “addicted to drugs and alcohol for 10 years and probably spent a million dollars partying, and tried to commit suicide three times. I just got tired of being tired and decided to rededicate my life to the Lord in 1984. That’s when I also got delivered from the drugs and alcohol.”
Rerun passed away from complications due to a stroke in 2003, at age of 52. He was survived by his three children and his wife.
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