Robert Hegyes, famous for the role of Juan Epstein in Welcome Back, Kotter, died at 60 after suffering an apparent heart attack:
from here: Robert Hegyes, Juan Epstein of 'Welcome Back Kotter' dead at 60 - nj.com
Signed,
Epstein’s Mother
Robert Hegyes of ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ finally got out of high school. Died at 60. So long Juan Epstein; Mr. Kotter will miss you in his class.
Another moment of my early teens gone. I was in 6th grade when this show started. Where the hell did my life go?
The first couple seasons of Welcome Back Kotter were really good. Geat show based on Kabe’s Nightclub act.
Merged threads.
::Horschack laugh::
He was hobbling around with a cane on the TVLand awards, so I took it from that that at least some aspects of his health had seen better days.
Aww…he was the only Sweathog I didn’t hate. RIP.
Oydios
What a shame.
Robert Hegyes passed away this week. Not sure of the actual day because all the article says is that a funeral home was notified of his death on Thursday.
I loved Welcome Back, Kotter; it was filled with great characters.
Hegyes was apparently also a good guy:
RIP Epstein.
I saw him on a Sweathogs reunion a year or 2 back. Seemed like a nice guy - he was a teacher at the time.
Sleep tight Epstein.
Oh no. How very sad. Welcome Back Kotter was a slice of my youth. RIP Juan.
Hard to think of Epstein as 60 years old.
Does anybody remember the Welcome Back Kotter [del]dolls[/del] action figures? I remember when those figures were a staple, along with MAS*H action figures, at “Ben Franklin” and “Bill’s Dollar Stores” (i.e. discount stores that carried discontinued items, something like Big Lots today but smaller), since apparently they weren’t that popular. (Can’t think why- what kid didn’t want Gabe Kaplan and McLean Stevenson action figures?)
He was also a regular on Cagney & Lacy. He appeared with his fellow non-Travolta Sweathogs in this Pulp Fiction spoof.
Picture taken in 2008. He seems to have changed a bit in the last 35 years, which is odd for I haven’t.
For the second time in the history of the world, Juan Louis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein has a bonifide excuse from Epstein’s mother. It is a sadder world indeed.
FWIW, the embedded video shows a young James Wood as an opposing debate team member.
Neither have I. Or I don’t look like an elderly lesbian, at least. 
He was the funny one. The rest I wanted to punch in the face. Except Julie Kotter, AKA: Missus Kot-TER. Nurse Cutler was always my kinda girl.
Merged another thread into this one.
Great to see James Woods before he was famous, but damn, that show didn’t age well, did it?
He was living in Metuchen???
Damn. That’s not far from where I grew up. Teeny little industrial NJ town. (It’s completely surrounded by the borough of Edison, N.J., as if Eduison were an amoeba trying to ingest it.) Hard to believe a former TV actor living there. But the article says he was born in NJ.
Not the first Sweathog to die: the great Debralee Scott is no longer amongst us.