From The Salt Lake Tribune:
While his teenage son beats on a set of drums in the background, Ernie Wallengren looks straight into the camera and says, “I’m bored.”
Not a surprising sentiment for any active person with a progressive, fatal disease that requires him to use a wheelchair, but for a living dynamo such as Wallengren, boredom was excruciating.
Wallengren, a Heber City native, hadn’t stopped moving since he began his television career as a writing apprentice on “Little House on the Prairie” straight out of college. As a recently returned LDS missionary, he wrote the 1980 teleplay “Mr. Krueger’s Christmas,” a light tale featuring Jimmy Stewart as a housebound janitor who fantasizes about conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Later, he wrote and produced dozens of episodes of television series such as “Doc,” “Touched by an Angel,” “The New Adventures of Flipper,” “Life Goes On” and “Falcon Crest.” He produced the first episode of “Baywatch,” but backed away from the show after seeing the bawdy direction it was taking.
Father to five children, Wallengren willingly divided his time among work, home, studios and computers. An avid basketball fan and player, Wallengren coached his sons’ high-school teams, barking out commands while pacing the sidelines.