From: bigmongo@biteme.com   
      
   https://variety.com/2025/music/obituaries-people-news/lulu-roman-dead-hee-   
   haw-star-gospel-singer-1236377800/   
      
   Lulu Roman, Star of TV’s ‘Hee Haw’ Over a Nearly Quarter-Century Run,   
   Dies   
   at 78   
      
      
   By Chris Willman   
      
   Lulu Roman, who found fame as a comedic actress and singer on the TV   
   series “Hee Haw” over a run that lasted from 1969 till 1993, died   
   Wednesday at age 78. No cause of death was immediately given, apart from   
   it being revealed that Roman passed away unexpectedly.   
      
   Beyond her long and successful run on television, which also included   
   guest spots on “The Love Boat” and “Touched by an Angel,” Roman   
   recorded a   
   long series of albums in the Southern gospel vein, winning a Dove Award in   
   1985 and being inducted into the Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame in   
   1999.   
      
   The rural-themed sketch-comedy and country music show was looking for a   
   plus-sized actress with comedic skills to become a member of the ensemble   
   cast when “Hee Haw” went on the air in 1969. Roman fit the bill perfectly,   
   instantly becoming practically a member of the family in many American   
   homes that had a taste for the show’s literal cornpone humor.   
      
   Fellow singers and her TV costars paid tribute to her Thursday. “We were   
   as different as night and day, said Misty Rowe, a “Hee Haw” stalwart.   
   “Working together since 1972 we were the original Hee Haw Honeys and the   
   original Kornfield Friends. Yet we would often squabble and then make up   
   by saying ‘I love you Lu’ and she would say ‘I love you too Sugar.’   
   Lulu   
   was a gift in my life. She played my mother twice and yet she was just   
   three years older than me. We were Gossipy Girls and now Lulu is my angel   
   in heaven. I thank God for her time here on earth and I know we will all   
   see her again in that big Kornfield in the sky someday. She will sing us   
   home.”   
      
   Roman credited “Hee Haw” co-host and country legend Buck Owens for getting   
   her her break. “He said, ‘One of these days you’re going to be a big   
   star,   
   and I’m going to have something to do with it.’ I says, ‘Keep talking,   
   cowboy’,” she recalled in an interview for “The 700 Club.” “But   
   “When they   
   put together the ‘Hee Haw’ show, there were a couple of fellows from   
   Canada that had seen ‘Laugh-In’ and thought, ‘This could be a good thing.   
   We could do country music in this and do real well.’ So they made a list:   
   one gorgeous blonde and one gorgeous brunette; one girl-next-door type and   
   one boy-next-door type; one fat, dumb man and one fat, dumb woman. Buck   
   said, ‘I got your girl. She’s in Dallas!'”   
      
   She added, kidding, “I was the gorgeous blonde, of course … He said,   
   ‘They’re going to do this country and western-type show, and they’re   
   going   
   to call it ‘Hee Haw.’ I said, ‘Hee what?’ He said, ‘Hee Haw, like a   
   donkey.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘There’s going to be a lot of   
   money.’ I   
   said, ‘Keep talkin’.’ They put me on a big jet plane, and they flew me to   
   Hollywood, took me to CBS Television Studios. The first person I saw was   
   Carol Burnett. I’ll never forget as long as I live. She met us in the hall   
   and said, ‘Shut your mouth, child. You’re fixin’ to be one of us.'”   
      
   But life outside of the Hollywood cornfield was difficult for Roman, who   
   admitted she was “so messed up on drugs… most of the time” while doing   
   the   
   show. “I ended up getting busted not once, but twice, for possession of   
   dangerous drugs. It ended up costing me losing my position on the ‘Hee   
   Haw’ show for a whole year. In the middle of that, I found out that I was   
   very much with child,” and unwed, which was scandalous for a family show   
   in the early 1970s.   
      
   “Hee Haw” was canceled by CBS in 1971, just two years into its run, in   
   what some referred to as a “rural purge.” But it became a hit in   
   syndication, and Roman rejoined the cast in 1973, sticking with the show   
   until it finally went off the air in the mid-1990s.   
      
   Her battles with narcotics and overeating stemmed partly from being   
   abandoned to an orphanage as a child. Born Bertha Louise Hable in Dallas,   
   Texas on May 6, 1946, Roman said she vividly remembered the day she was   
   dropped off at age 4 by her grandmother, on Sept. 10, 1950. “I think I   
   probably felt it a little harder than most of them because I was ‘the fat   
   kid.’ I came in with a thyroid problem,” she said, “and I got things   
   like,   
   ‘Fatty, fatty, 2 x 4, can’t get through the kitchen door.’ I realize now   
   that even then the enemy had plans to speak death to my spirit.” In   
   another interview with CBN, she said, “I think my food became my drug   
   probably the day that they put me in the orphans’ home. Sugar became my   
   friend, because it didn’t hurt me and it didn’t talk back to me; it   
   didn’t   
   call me names.”   
      
   That factored into her ticket to stardom, ironically. “I learned very   
   early on that I could use a quick wit that the Lord had given me to have   
   people laugh with me instead of at me.” That sense of humor was burnished   
   over a long period of time in the orphans’ home, as, she said, “I never   
   got adopted. They didn’t adopt fat kids.” When she turned 18, she was   
   released from the orphanage into the world.   
      
   During her forced hiatus from “Hee Haw,” things went badly enough for   
   Roman that she was jailed twice. Meeting up afterward with a friend from   
   the orphanage after she’d gotten out of jail for the second time, she was   
   convinced to attend a church service. “When I got down on my knees and   
   gave my life to the Lord, in that place, I mean, instantly He took those   
   drugs away from me.” The show, well aware of her enduring popularity even   
   when she was off the air, took note of her cleaning up. “They said, ‘Will   
   you come back?’ And I said, ‘I’ll tell you this: I’ll pray about it.’   
      
   Roman returned to the show and stuck with it through many changes —   
   including a move from a network prime-time spot to syndication — until   
   “Hee Haw” finally signed off in 1995, 26 years after it started.   
      
   Roman got an allowance to sing Christian songs on the show, and released   
   many albums in the Southern gospel vein during and subsequent to her “Hee   
   Haw” run. She was inducted into the Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame.   
      
   Even though Roman found satisfaction in spirituality, her physical health   
   declined, to the point she said she weighed 380 pounds by the time she was   
   in her early 60s and could only get around using a scooter.   
      
   But she dropped 200 pounds from her frame, and went down from a size 56/58   
      
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