Lynn Hamilton, the versatile stage and screen actor best remembered as nurse Donna Harris on NBC’s “Sanford and Son,” died Thursday, 19 June 2025, at her home in Chicago. She was 95, her former manager and publicist, the Rev. Calvin Carson, confirmed, saying the cause was natural causes. Carson added in a Facebook statement that memorial details will be released once arrangements are finalized and invited fans to share tributes as the family mourns.
During six seasons on “Sanford and Son” (1972-77), Hamilton’s calm, competent Donna provided a counterweight to Redd Foxx’s irascible Fred Sanford and helped the sitcom become a breakthrough hit for Black-led television when it premiered 50 years ago. Her performance also resonated in prime-time drama as Verdie Foster, the dignified schoolteacher who sought literacy late in life on CBS’s “The Waltons,” a character fans still praise for humanizing racial issues in Depression-era Appalachia.
Born Alzenia Lynn Hamilton on 25 April 1930 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, she moved to Chicago Heights at 12, studied at the Goodman Theatre, and debuted on Broadway in 1959’s “Only in America.” John Cassavetes cast her in his landmark film “Shadows” that same year, launching a five-decade career that spanned features such as “Buck and the Preacher,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” and a recurring judgeship on David E. Kelley’s “The Practice.”
Hamilton often confronted—and corrected—misinformation about her life. Despite frequent internet claims, she was not related to her “Sanford and Son” colleague LaWanda Page; the two became close friends on the set but shared no family ties. She did, however, reprise Donna in the series finale, “The Engagement,” cementing the character’s place in television history.
Industry figures were quick to acknowledge her passing. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, while the outlet’s social-media post prompted tributes from fans and former co-stars including Demond Wilson, who called her “the heart that steadied our set.” Scholars noted that the warmth she brought to Donna “helped sell risky social satire to mainstream audiences,” as the Television Academy’s retrospective on “Sanford and Son” observed.
Hamilton married poet-playwright Frank S. Jenkins in 1964; their union lasted 49 years until his death in 2014. She is survived by their daughter and extended family. Funeral information will be announced, Carson said, “as we celebrate a life that taught us grace under laughter.”