Fred Grandy

About

Fredrick Lawrence Grandy (born June 29, 1948) is an American actor who played Burl “Gopher” Smith on the TV series The Love Boat and who later became a member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Iowa. Grandy was most recently the host of The Grandy Group, a morning drive time radio talk show on 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C.

Grandy was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the youngest of three sons of William Grandy, who worked in his father’s insurance business, and his wife, Bonnie. When Grandy was eleven, his father died of a heart attack. His mother died of an aneurysm a year later.
The young Grandy was then raised by Margaret Avery, his mother’s best friend (a widow who later married his father’s doctor). He attended public schools until ninth grade, after which he attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, as his father and brothers had done. At Exeter, Grandy was the roommate of David Eisenhower, the grandson of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was later best man at Eisenhower’s wedding to Julie Nixon, the daughter of then–president-elect Richard Nixon, in December 1968.
Grandy graduated magna…