{"id":77472,"date":"2025-08-12T15:53:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77472\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T15:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T15:53:13","slug":"danielle-spencer-child-star-of-whats-happening-dies-at-60","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/77472\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Spencer, Child Star Of \u2018What\u2019s Happening!!\u2019, Dies At 60"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What's<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES – NOVEMBER 1976: Actress Danielle Spencer from the TV show ‘What’s Happening!!’ poses for a photo in November 1976 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

Danielle Spencer, the former child star best known for her role as the sharp-tongued Dee Thomas on the ABC sitcom What\u2019s Happening!!, died August 11, according to a post on Instagram by her friend and co-star Haywood Nelson. The cause of death was not known at press time. Spencer was 60.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrilliance! It comes in a great many forms. We all have them, and we all have this family\u2019s \u2014 Dr. Danielle Spencer (June 24, 1965 \u2013 August 11, 2025),\u201d wrote Haywood Nelson. \u201cDr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body. We celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson continued: \u201cWe have lost a daughter, sister, family member, What\u2019s Happening!! cast member, veterinarian, animal rights proponent and healer, and cancer heroine. Our Shero. Danielle is loved. She will be missed in this form and forever embraced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born June 24, 1965, in the Bronx, New York, Spencer was cast in 1976 as Dee Thomas, the precocious younger sister on What\u2019s Happening!!, a sitcom loosely based on the 1975 film Cooley High. Initially a summer replacement, the series ran for three seasons and was revived in first-run syndication as What\u2019s Happening Now!! from 1985 to 1988. Spencer reprised her role as a now college-aged Dee on a recurring basis.<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES – CIRCA 1979: Actors (L-R) Fred ‘Rerun’ Berry, Haywood Nelson, Danielle Spencer and Ernest Thomas from the TV show ‘What’s Happening!!’ on the set circa 1979 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/p>\n

During the second season of the original show, on September 6, 1977, Spencer was involved in a serious car accident that left her in a three-week coma and claimed the life of her stepfather, Tim Pelt. She spent six months recovering.<\/p>\n

Spencer later experienced paralysis due to spinal stenosis and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, which she overcame after chemotherapy. In 2018, she underwent emergency brain surgery for a bleeding hematoma resulting from the 1977 car accident.<\/p>\n

After What\u2019s Happening!! ended, Spencer and her mother spent time living in Africa before she enrolled at the University of California, Davis, to pursue veterinary medicine \u2014 a career path encouraged by her late stepfather. Following the cancellation of What\u2019s Happening Now!!, she attended Tuskegee University Veterinary School in Alabama and became a veterinarian in 1996.<\/p>\n

In addition to her veterinary career, Spencer shared her story in the memoir Through the Fire: Journal of a Child Star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES – NOVEMBER 1976: Actress Danielle Spencer from the TV show ‘What’s Happening!!’ poses for a photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,54814,88,54816,54815],"class_list":{"0":"post-77472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-danielle-spencer","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-haywood-nelson","12":"tag-whats-happening"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}