On Tuesday, a difficult year for celebrity deaths claimed one of the 1980s' most beloved TV dads, Growing Pains star Alan Thicke. He suffered heart failure while playing hockey with one of his children and later died at the hospital. He was 69.
He was best known for dispensing wisdom to Kirk Cameron and Tracey Gold. But Thicke was much more than Mike Seaver's dad — or even Robin Thicke's.
Here are a few of his more surprising accomplishments.
1. He wrote some of TV's most memorable theme songs
He didn't write As Long As We Got Each Other, the theme song from his own sitcom, but he did compose the opening music for Diff'rent Strokes and its spin-off, The Facts of Life, along with his first wife, soap opera actress Gloria Loring. So we know where son Robin Thicke got his musical talent from.
2. He played the dad in a Robin Sparkles video on How I Met Your Mother
Like Cobie Smulders and her character, former bubble-gum pop star-turned-New York reporter Robin Scherbatsky, Thicke was a Canuck. So in the minds of the HIMYM writers, it was only fitting that he play the dad in the video for her ballad Sandcastles in the Sand in the show's third season. He later returned as himself in another episode and even shot a video for CanandianSexActs.org, a website the show made up for use in the Season 4 episode "Old King Clancy."
3. He and comedian Gilbert Gottfried once traded spouses on Celebrity Wife Swap
Yep, that actually happened.
4. He was elected homecoming king at his high school
If we were the betting type, we'd wager that media outlets are trying to track down a 1965 yearbook from Elliot Lake Secondary School in Ontario even as we type this.
5. He appears in the new season of Fuller House
Retro sitcom crossover alert! He pops up as a date for DJ Tanner (Candace Cameron Bure) in the second episode, titled "Mom Interference."
Photos | A look at Alan Thicke
Photos | People we've lost in 2016
