Personal Life
Nelson had a daughter named Christine from his first marriage to Jacqueline Nelson Gordon. Christine had cystic fibrosis and died from the disease in 1982, after attending Rye Country Day School. Her health problems were the reason Nelson took so much time off The Muppet Show's first season. She made a cameo appearance in the second Muppet movie, The Great Muppet Caper. Nelson's friend and employer, Muppets creator Jim Henson gave her a speaking part so she would become a member of the actors' union.
In 2004, Nelson announced that he would no longer be puppeteering his Muppet characters, citing health reasons. However, he continued to voice his characters on Sesame Street until his death 8 years later. Matt Vogel performs Nelson's Muppet characters, as well as the puppetry of Count von Count, with Nelson following his death. Vogel will presumably start performing the Count, both voice and puppetry following Nelson's passing.
Read more about this topic: Jerry Nelson
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters “woman’s peculiar sphere,” her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“Picture the prince, such as most of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people’s advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)