Alan Willis

Alan Willis Thicke, born Alan Willis Jeffrey (March 1, 1947 – December 13, 2016)

Thicke began his career hosting a Canadian game show on CFCF-TV in Montreal called First Impressions in the late 1970s. Thicke went on to host his own popular talk show in Canada during the early 1980s, called The Alan Thicke Show. The show at one point spawned a prime-time spinoff, Prime Cuts, which consisted of edited highlights from the talk show. He was best known for his role as Jason Seaver, the father on the ABC television series Growing Pains, which ran for seven seasons. He is the father of singer Robin Thicke. In 2013, Thicke was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. Thicke had a successful career as a TV theme song composer, often collaborating with his then-wife Gloria Loring on these projects, which included the themes to the popular sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. He also wrote a number of TV game show themes, including The Wizard of Odds (for which he also sang the vocal introduction), among other shows. In the 1990s, Thicke was the spokesman for the Canadian division of Woolco department stores until its demise in 1994. On December 13, 2016, Thicke collapsed while playing hockey with his son Carter at Pickwick Gardens in Burbank, California. The manager of the rink said he was talking and even joked to his son to take a photo as he was being wheeled out on a stretcher. Thicke died of type-A aortic dissection at the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, at the age of 69. He is buried at Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California