Barbara Billingsley, aka June Cleaver (wife of Ward and mother of  Wally and “Beaver”) in the classic family TV sitcom Leave it to Beaver has died at the age of 94.

The show debuted in 1957 and ran until 1963 (ending just months before the assassination of JFK). To this day it remains iconic of an uncynical era in which parents were actually presented as wiser than their kids and TV shows dared to impart simple moral lessons regarding such things as kindness and personal responsibility.

Here’s Billingsley recalling those days in an interview for the Archive of American Television.

While Leave it to Beaver is probably one of the most spoofed shows in TV history, the truth is it was actually very well written, expressed simple truths in ways that children (and adults) could understand and was never quite as unrealistic as it is often made out to be.

It was, for instance, no less realistic than Married…with Children, another iconic series built around a nuclear family (albeit with a far different sensibility). Which show we find more realistic depends both on our individual family experiences and the portion of the prism through which we choose to look at life. 

Leave it to Beaver chose to present life from the positive and optimistic side of the prism — providing viewers an example of a caring, functional family rather than a dysfunctional one. We learn by example.

And Barbara Billingsley played her role as a loving, intelligent wife and mother with class and distinction. Her  place in TV history is well-earned.