The Life and Sad Ending® of Bobby Buntrock – He Appeared on the TV Show ‘Hazel’ in the 1960’s | HO

LOS ANGELES — In an industry that often measures success by longevity and headlines, Bobby Buntrock’s career was brief, bright, and indelibly tied to a single role. As Harold “Sport” Baxter on the hit sitcom Hazel, the Denver-born child actor smiled his way into America’s living rooms each week in the 1960s. Then, almost as quickly as he arrived, he disappeared from television — and from life.

He died in a tragic accident at just 21, leaving behind a handful of credits, a cherished character, and a lingering question: What might have been?

Born Robert W. “Bobby” Buntrock on August 4, 1952, in Denver, Colorado, he was the son of Robert and Maxine Buntrock and the brother to sisters Deanne and Stella. Family photos show a round-cheeked kid with alert eyes — the kind that make casting directors take a second look.

When the Buntrocks moved to California while Bobby was still very young, neighbors and friends encouraged his parents to consider show business. It was the era of kid-friendly TV westerns and family comedies; the timing, and the young boy’s camera-ready charm, aligned.

By 1959, at age 7, Buntrock booked his first part on Wagon Train, one of television’s signature Westerns. Small roles on Mr. Ed and The Donna Reed Show followed, introducing him to the rhythms of sets and the tight schedules of episodic TV.

In between, like many young actors of the time, he appeared in commercials — including the era-defining Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots ads whose punchy taglines (“And a hard right to the jaw!”) rang through countless living rooms. Kids across America recognized the toy — and the boy pitching it.

The pivotal break came in 1961. NBC was adapting Ted Key’s popular Saturday Evening Post single-panel cartoon Hazel into a primetime sitcom starring Shirley Booth, a Broadway titan and 1952 Academy Award winner. Cast as Harold “Sport” Baxter — the bright, polite son of George and Dorothy Baxter — Buntrock became the smallest member of a carefully calibrated ensemble.

Don DeFore played George, Whitney Blake played Dorothy, and Booth’s Hazel was the sharp-tongued, big-hearted housemaid whose commonsense meddling kept the Baxter household humming.

Hazel premiered in the fall of 1961 to strong ratings and rapidly settled into a comfortable groove: domestic quandaries solved by Hazel’s wit, a steady drumbeat of middle-class dilemmas, and Harold “Sport” as the earnest boy whose questions often set a story in motion. Buntrock’s Harold was a presence in almost every episode — a child role that asked for timing, clarity, and warmth more than precocious punchlines. He delivered.

For four seasons on NBC (1961–65), Hazel was a ratings workhorse. It capitalized on Shirley Booth’s star power while presenting a quintessentially American picture of home life. Buntrock grew up on screen, aging from seven to early adolescence as the series kept its tone consistent and its audience loyal.

In 1965, as tastes began to shift and network priorities changed, Hazel made a risky move: CBS picked up the series for a fifth season, but with a retooled premise. Don DeFore and Whitney Blake were released. The Baxter family was shuffled. Harold, still played by Buntrock, moved in with his Uncle Steve Baxter (Ray Fulmer) and Aunt Barbara (Lynn Borden). Hazel’s dynamic now flowed through a new household.

Reformatting a hit is notoriously precarious. The fifth season (1965–66) preserved Hazel’s central charm — Shirley Booth remained the gravitational center — but the chemistry was undeniably different.

For Buntrock, the shift meant adapting Harold “Sport” to different adult foils and a slightly altered family structure. The series concluded its run in 1966 after five seasons and 154 episodes, with Buntrock having appeared in the vast majority of them. By then, he had worked nearly half his life in front of cameras.

After Hazel ended, Buntrock’s screen appearances became exceedingly rare. He booked two episodes of the long-running western The Virginian in 1967. And then, as far as Hollywood was concerned, he was gone. There was no splashy teen-idol phase, no awkward guest turns engineered to extend a child star’s shelf life.

Instead, the Buntrock family left Los Angeles behind. They relocated to Keystone, South Dakota, a tourist town known for its proximity to Mount Rushmore and small-town pace. Bobby enrolled at Sturgis Brown High School and graduated in 1970, far from the soundstages that had once defined his routine.

What he carried from the industry — craft, discipline, recognition — never translated into an adult acting career. Friends and family would remember him as modest about his TV years, happy to be a normal teenager, and quick to smile when old Hazel episodes resurfaced on local stations. He was, in many ways, a test case for the question that still plagues child stardom: What happens when the lights go down and the ordinary world resumes?

On April 7, 1974, the answer turned tragic. Buntrock was driving near Keystone when he encountered a bridge under construction. Details recorded in local reports and remembered in town lore point to a catastrophic sequence: his vehicle left the roadway, plunged into Battle Creek below, and submerged. He drowned before help could reach him. He was 21.

In the pre-internet era, news of a former child actor’s death traveled slowly. There was no tidal wave of social media mourning, no instant retrospectives. For many Hazel fans, the loss would not be widely known until years later, when reunion articles and nostalgia clips began to circulate.

In Keystone, the shock was immediate and intimate. The young man who had once been a TV fixture was now a local son lost. He was laid to rest in Keystone Cemetery.

The contours of Bobby Buntrock’s life — early start, sitcom success, quiet exit, sudden end — are stark, but they are not hollow. They speak to a particular American moment when network television centered family comedies and gave child actors steady, demanding work; when a series like Hazel could define an entire weeknight for millions; and when the industry’s scaffolding for transitioning child performers to adult careers was minimal at best.

Hazel itself remains a time capsule worth revisiting. In Shirley Booth’s hands, the title character — originally a one-panel cartoon — became fully dimensional: part moral compass, part comedic engine, part cultural mediator. The series’ domestic settings embodied a mid-century ideal while thoughtfully testing its boundaries through Hazel’s stubborn decency.

Within that frame, Harold “Sport” Baxter added an earnest heartbeat. Buntrock’s work did not call for scenery-chewing, but for presence — to listen, to ask, to react. It’s a deceptively difficult assignment for a young actor, and he made it look effortless.

The machine that produces child stardom has churned for decades, but its outputs are unpredictable. Some kids become marquee adults. Some drift into other careers by choice or necessity. Some, like Buntrock, are preserved on screen at a moment just before adolescence, forever the age audiences remember.

The transition from child roles to adult personhood is not merely a change in casting calls; it is a psychological and social shift that many navigate without fanfare. Buntrock did so out of the spotlight, in a small town, surrounded by family.

His death raised broader concerns and prompted local reflections on road safety around construction sites — a reminder that tragedies are often less cinematic than senseless. There was no scandal, no spiral, no cautionary Hollywood arc. Just an accident that ended a life before its next chapter really began.

In the decades since, Hazel has lived on in syndication blocks, DVD boxed sets, and streaming corners dedicated to classic TV. New generations encounter Shirley Booth’s timing, Don DeFore’s easy charm, Whitney Blake’s warmth, and the ensemble’s gentle rhythms. And, inevitably, viewers search the names in the credits.

That’s often when they learn that the bright-eyed boy in the Baxter household — the kid who called Hazel “Missy” and learned his simple lessons with sincerity — died in 1974.

Colleagues who worked with Buntrock have described him as a consummate pro for his age: on time, prepared, generous with fellow cast members. Crew members reportedly found him easy to direct, focused, and unspoiled by early attention. Those recollections matter because they frame the person, not just the role.

In an era when the culture alternates between idolizing and indicting former child stars, Buntrock’s story offers a quieter reality. He was a working kid who did his job well, then went home and tried to build a life beyond it.

For fans, remembrance often takes a simple form: a comment posted under a clip, a note on a classic TV forum, a recollection of watching Hazel with parents or grandparents. “We watched Hazel every week,” one common refrain goes, a testament to how shared viewing once anchored family routines.

In those memories, Bobby Buntrock is more than a footnote. He is the face of a time when sitcoms gathered generations on the same couch, and when television felt like a reliable friend.

The measure of a career need not be volume. Sometimes it is clarity. Bobby Buntrock’s credits fit on a single page. His impact, for those who grew up with Hazel, resonates decades longer. His life reminds us that entertainment history is built as much by the steady contributions of working actors as by the legends whose names crown marquees. And his ending, unbearably sad, underscores the fragility that underlies even our most comforting stories.

At Keystone Cemetery, amid the pines and the South Dakota sky, Bobby Buntrock’s grave draws occasional visitors — fans passing through, locals who remember, travelers who read a line in a guide and sought a moment of connection. They leave quietly, the way he left Hollywood, humbled by how swiftly bright chapters can close.

Television preserves. It cannot protect. The boy on screen remains forever seven, then ten, then thirteen — an eternal “Sport,” the son in a sitcom family that never ages. Off screen, time did what it always does. It carried a young actor away from the lights, into real life, and then, too soon, into legend of the gentlest, saddest kind.