Sharon Kristin Nelson

 Sharon Kristin Nelson ( June 25, 1945 – April 27, 2018)

She was a primitive painter, actress, and author, once married to the actor and musician Ricky Nelson. Daughter of the American football star Tom Harmon and actress/model Elyse Knox, her younger siblings are model-actress Kelly Harmon and actor Mark Harmon. In 1963, at age 17, Harmon married Rick Nelson and joined their family television show. The couple had four children, but their extravagant lifestyle forced Nelson to tour for long periods, placing great pressure on the marriage. Their first, daughter Tracy, was born six months after the wedding on October 25, 1963. A long-fought divorce was finally granted before Rick Nelson's death in an air-crash in 1985. In 1988, she married Mark Tinker, who encouraged her to paint. Her brightly colored primitives found favor with Jacqueline Kennedy and Mia Farrow, among other celebrities, and they form the basis of her coffee-table autobiography Out of My Mind. In 1987, two years after Nelson's death, Harmon was undergoing drug rehabilitation when her brother Mark Harmon and his wife Pam Dawber petitioned for custody of Kristin's youngest son Sam, on the grounds that Kristin was incapable of good parenting.

Sam's psychiatrist testified that the thirteen-year-old boy depicted his mother as a dragon and complained about her mood swings and how she prevented him from being with his siblings. Mark Harmon dropped the custody petition after his sister made allegations of cocaine use by Dawber. It was announced by her daughter Tracy that Nelson died on April 27, 2018 from a heart attack. She was 72 years old.