‘All My Children’ Actress Mary Fickett Dies at 83

This September, “All My Children” fans will be saying goodbye to their favorite residents of Pine Valley. Unfortunatley, Mary Fickett, one of the original cast members of the iconic soap opera, won’t be around for the farewell party. Fickett passed away at her Callao, Virginia home on Thursday. She was 83.

Fickett, who played nurse Ruth Martin on “All My Children” for close to forty years, won an Emmy for her role in 1973. It was the first year that an Emmy was given to an individual actor for daytime dramas.

The LA Times reports that Fickett played Nurse Ruth from 1970 to 1995 and again from 1998 to 2000. “All My Children” set the standard for extraordinary plots, but Fickett was proud to be part of the “core” of the long-running daytime drama.

Fickett said in an interview with Time in 1995:

“There has to be some core around which other people disintegrate and come together again. If the place were in chaos all the time, you wouldn’t have some place to bounce off of. They’ve had problems — Ruth was raped, and she had an affair — but viewers want to believe that there is a core.”

“All My Children” is going off the air this September. ABC said that they will be dedicating the September 21st episode to Mary Fickett. The show will go off the air two days later on September 23rd.

Will you be watching the final episode of “All My Children?”