Column: Mrs. Carol Brady and me, the untold story — How ‘America’s mom’ became a small but significant part of my life

As Mother’s Day arrives, I will once again take a moment to remember how “America’s mom,” Florence Henderson, essentially climbed off my TV screen and out of a family photo album to give her blessing to the birth of my son more than a half-century after serving as a bridesmaid at my parents’ wedding.

“The baby is so beautiful and I wish you and your wife all the best,” she wrote in an email about two years before her 2016 death. “Kiss that baby for me! God bless and love, Florence.”

She added that my late mother and grandmother would be “over the moon” about the new baby.

A few sentences in an email would not be cause for celebration for most people, but to me this was sort of heaven-sent, or at least Hollywood-sent.

You see, I came of age during the initial 1969-74 run of “The Brady Bunch,” and aside from joining the rest of American teen boys at the time in wanting to run away with Marcia, I became enamored with the idea of living at the oh-so-modern-for-the-time Brady house.

As an only child, I longed for the camaraderie of the Brady siblings, even if they did all share a bathroom without a toilet. Check out the shows, you’ll never see one.

My father died early in the run of the show and my mother became a hardworking single mom, so it was easy to understand how my imagination ran wild with thoughts of being taught life lessons by the ever-earnest Mike Brady, and showered with love and support by the always-sweet Carol Brady.

Little did I know I would get a small dose of the real thing decades later.

It was at about this time that I remember my mother telling me that I had a real connection to the show I loved. It turns out Mrs. Brady, aka Florence Henderson, was once a close friend of my mother’s, thanks to an acting class or two they attended together years before “the one day when the lady met this fellow.”

While Henderson went on to become an international star and TV icon, my mother’s acting career only got as far as work in community theater. Still, she would often proudly tell stories about how “Florence” used to sing in the family living room with my grandmother at the piano.

I was initially skeptical about the whole thing, being a bratty-teenager-in-training. That was until my mother broke out my parents’ wedding album, complete with a few photos of a young Henderson — more than a decade away from her first appearance as Mrs. Brady, and eventually earning the nickname of “America’s mom” — doing what bridesmaids do.

There was even a shot of her singing at the reception, presumably not the jingle from the Wesson cooking oil commercials in which she would eventually be featured.

Make no mistake, by the time I realized my oh-so-tiny connection to the mom on TV, her relationship with my mother and the rest of our family was fading fast. I have vague memories of seeing Christmas cards from her for a while, but I never met “my” TV mom, and the stories about her eventually became few and far between.

Of course, that didn’t stop me in college and into adulthood from using my Mrs. Brady connection when friends tried to one-up each another with who had the best celebrity story or connection to the rich and famous.

After hearing one person boast about, say, being a distant relative of a rock star, or another talking about appearing in the background of some commercial, I would point out Mrs. Brady was a bridesmaid at my parents’ wedding and sang at their reception. Mic drop.

The year escapes me, but there was a time decades after “The Brady Bunch” when Henderson was touring in a play that came through an area of Florida where my mother, grandmother and I had all ended up living separately. My grandmother, an aunt and uncle went to the show and managed to talk their way backstage to see Henderson and relive some of the good old days.

My mother did not go along and offered little or no explanation as to why. For reasons I can only surmise, I suspect she preferred that “Florence” remember her as the young woman she was when they first met and as the young bride she was on her wedding day, with all her dreams still in front of her.

Fast-forward to a decade or so ago, when I was once again annoying new acquaintances with tales of my lifelong connection to the woman still showing up on TV shows and commercials. One took great interest in my story, so much so that he more or less dared me to get in touch with the TV icon.

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Intrigued, and thanks to the wonders of the internet, it took me all of five minutes to find a way to send Henderson a message through a fan website with the subject line: “You were a bridesmaid at my parents’ wedding.” Soon, I got a response from her publicist or assistant, asking me to verify that my connection was real. Then came a nice note from Florence Henderson herself.

It would be a few years before I would send her another note about the birth of my son. But, in that initial message, I told her about how I spent a lifetime bragging about my connection to her and how my mother spoke fondly of her in the years prior to her death.

In her response, Henderson did not reference my using her to one-up my friends. Turns out, she had not heard about my mother’s passing, and wrote about a memory or two she had of their times together.

“I’ll always remember her smile,” Henderson wrote.

Turns out my mother might have been onto something in leaving her bridesmaid with only memories of her from their time together as young women.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, and a special thanks to “America’s mom” for her Mrs. Brady-like kindness.

Jon Rabiroff is the managing editor of the Lake County News-Sun.