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Separated by Time, but Joined by Fate:
Dan Blocker

Written by Marshall Myerson

This post isn’t about celebrity nostalgia. It’s about something deeper — something strange that stuck with me after I learned that Dan Blocker, the beloved actor who played Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza, died from the same surgery I survived. A routine operation today. A death sentence for him in 1972.

When I read that, it hit me harder than I expected. I started watching Bonanza because I love old Westerns — the moral clarity, the music, the grit. But something about Hoss always stood out: the kindness in his voice, the honesty in his face, the way he made decency feel powerful. He felt familiar. Safe. Like family. And ready to use his strength and stature to defend his in an instant.

After my surgery, I went looking for comfort. I found it in Gary Cooper. John Wayne. Jimmy Stewart. Eventually, I finally "struck Bonanza," as Lorne sings in the show's alternate introduction. Though I discovered Bonanza many, many years after Blocker's death, later, still, did I learn that he died from the same surgery I had. He died at 43. Forty-fucking-three. The same exact procedure. An embolism. Gone in an instant, and somehow, here I was. Alive.

I don’t believe in fate the way Hallmark sells it, I believe in echoes. I believe in legacies...And I believe that some men — good men — leave behind a kind of spiritual fingerprint-a compass for others, like me, to strive to adopt as my own...I see Blocker’s compass rose. I still do, if not only for the fact that Big Hoss Cartwright is still alive and well, getting some hard work done on the Ponderossa with Adam, Little Joe, and Pa-both in my imagination and in my cherished DVD collection of western television shows.

I don’t know what it means, our connection. Me n' Dan. Maybe nothing, but it’s real. I made it. He didn’t...and I don’t want to forget that.

Separated by time, but joined by fate.