Melanie Watson playing Kathy Gordon on Diff’rent Strokes. (Getty Images)
Watson was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, a genetic condition in which the body does not make enough collagen to keep bones strong.
She had recently been hospitalized for bleeding, but her condition deteriorated despite doctors’ best efforts, her brother, Robert Watson, told TMZ. She died Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he said.
Watson, who used a wheelchair, appeared alongside the late Gary Coleman in four episodes of the now-classic sitcom in the third season of the show, earning accolades in particular for the 1982 episode “Kathy” and the 1984 episode “Kathy’s Olympics,” according to People.
The sitcom starred Coleman and Todd Bridges and ran for eight seasons from 1978 to 1986. Back then it was uncommon for a person with a disability to be depicted on television, and Watson’s authentic portrayal of a young person with a disability was widely noted, according to Forbes.
Her character Kathy was an upbeat, wheelchair-using child who helped Arnold, played by Coleman, accept his five-foot-tall status over the course of four episodes from seasons three through 6. After her “Diff’rent Strokes” run, she founded and directed Train Rite, a nonprofit organization that trains shelter dogs as service animals, according to IMDb. From 1994 to 96 she was married to Robert Bernhardt.
Starting in 2019, Watson was CEO of Couiffie’s Ranch, which supports people with disabilities in living as independently as possible.
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