SALT LAKE CITY — Actor Gary Coleman came to Utah looking to re-establish his identity, to escape the supposed friends who he felt used, abused and abandoned him, and to face his financial frustrations.
But what Coleman found was a family in the form of ex-wife Shannon Price, her father and her siblings, Price's father told the Deseret News.
"It's kind of interesting that for almost 30-some-odd years of Gary's life he never really had a family, but the last five years he did. We were that family," Dale Price said before breaking down and apologizing. "It's still tough."
Dale Price and his son Sam sat down with the Deseret News to tell their family's story. He wanted to clear up what he feels are misrepresentations about his daughter and talk about the important role Coleman had in their life and them in his.
Coleman came from a "Hollywood" culture that taught him that any act of kindness came with strings attached, he said. Sam Price said Coleman would get frustrated when he wasn't allowed to repay every act of kindness in some way.
"One of the hardest things he had to learn was that when we did something for him, we asked nothing in return," Dale Price said. "We told Gary it's just who we are; it's the Utah culture. We're people who love and don't expect anything in return. We do it because we love you."
Coleman caught on to that and came to trust and respect those in the Price family.
"The people who cared for Gary were the ones in the hospital those last few hours," he said. "We were Gary's family. We took care of Gary, and Gary knew it, and he knew that he had a family that loved him."
Coleman, 42, died May 28 after suffering a brain hemorrhage from a fall in his Santaquin home. While he was in the hospital, he went into full cardiac arrest and never regained consciousness. But for Dale Price, Coleman's health had been an issue since it began to deteriorate three years before his death.
Between kidney problems, congestive heart failure and a slew of other illnesses, Coleman spent much of the last several years of his life in hospitals. He underwent dialysis treatments three times a week, had open heart surgery, spent three months in the intensive care unit and was even on life support at one point last fall.
The constant health struggles prevented Coleman from working regularly, and that — combined with his belief that his parents and other managers had taken as much as $20 million from him — frustrated him. His former father-in-law said Coleman struggled with the fact that he didn't have the finances to live the way he wanted without having to play off of the "Diff'rent Strokes" persona that had made him a TV star.
Coleman starred for eight seasons on the sitcom, which first aired in 1978, about two black brothers adopted by a wealthy white man. Coleman's "Whachu talkin' 'bout?" became a catch phrase in the show — a phrase that he grew to hate.
"He didn't want to be known as Gary Coleman, the child actor," Dale Price said. "Anything he did, he put in the contract that nobody was to say 'Whachu talkin' 'bout, Willis?' He did not like that. He turned down a $100,000 deal with McDonald's (to repeat the famous line), because he wanted to establish a different identity. He wanted to put Arnold Jackson and 'Diff'rent Strokes' in the past."
Through it all, Price said his daughter was at Coleman's side, despite having health issues herself.
"There were many, many nights where Shannon slept in the same ICU room as Gary," he said.
Coleman's pain was immense. Because of his illnesses and the medications for them, even drawing blood was extremely painful, and he said Coleman would scream and squirm constantly during medical procedures and he often walked like he was tired and sore.
"He lived a very painful life," Dale Price said, "but he didn't show it."
In the final months of his life, Gary's health began to improve. Dale Price said Gary started driving himself to dialysis treatments using the booster seat in his big pickup truck. But the treatments still left him "a little tipsy and off balance." His ex-father-in-law said he watched Coleman touch both walls to stay steady as he walked.
On May 26, Price got a call from his daughter telling him Gary had been in an accident. She said he'd gone downstairs to make some food, fallen, hit his head really hard and was going to the hospital.
When Price got to the Santaquin home, he was surprised to see virtually no blood in the kitchen where Coleman fell — considering the fact that his daughter's 911 call indicated that there was "blood all over the floor." He clarified that she most likely meant that there was a lot of blood on Coleman and the floor around him.
"There was no blood on the walls or on the countertop," he said. "I could hardly tell there was blood on the towel (Gary used)."
He did see a small stripe of blood on a baseboard, and said he believes Coleman, still weak from dialysis earlier that day, fell and hit his head on the edge of one of the raised kitchen-floor tiles.
Coleman, however, walked himself to the ambulance and was alert enough to communicate with his ex-wife and medical personnel, Dale Price said. At the hospital, a CT scan revealed there was blood in Coleman's brain. Additional scans revealed more bleeding. Doctors told Shannon Price it didn't look good and that surgery was not an option because of the blood thinners Coleman had been taking.
Coleman regained consciousness early the next morning, but 10 minutes later he went into full cardiac arrest. Coleman was put on life support, and Shannon Price was put in a wheelchair, exhausted and weak from her own illness and the stress of her ex-husband's condition, Dale Price said. As Coleman's condition continued to worsen, Shannon Price refused to consider him as dying, her father said.
Unable to bear the sight of her companion on what could be his death bed, Price said his daughter asked him to go see how Gary looked.
"I was shocked," he said. "It was a guy I hadn't seen in four or five years. He was so peaceful, so calm, so serene. I was 99 percent sure Gary was gone."
When doctors told Shannon Price there was no longer any hope, Dale Price said he called a few family members and close friends to come say goodbye to their friend before he passed. Shannon Price's brother Shawn and his wife, Leslie, were already on their way when their dad called, as was Dale Price's sister and other close relatives.
Contrary to news reports that said Shannon Price "ordered" that Coleman be taken off of life support, her father said she looked for alternatives until the end.
"Up to the very last minute, Shannon was asking the doctors, 'What can you do to keep Gary alive?' " he said.
Finally, family, friends and medical professionals persuaded her to go say goodbye to Gary and then let him go.
"She went in, got out of the wheelchair, kissed his forehead, rubbed his head, rubbed his shoulders several times," her father said. "I had to turn away, the fears were flowing. It was just a very tender thing."
After Shannon Price said goodbye, her brother Shawn read Coleman some of the e-mails that had come in from fans around the world, expressing their concerns and best wishes. When Coleman was finally removed from life support, he went without a sound, surrounded by those who cared for him most, Dale Price recalled.
"The people who loved Gary were there with him in those last few hours," he said.
Though it's been more than a month since Coleman's death, Dale Price's emotions were still fresh as he spoke affectionately of the man he sometimes referred to simply as "4 feet 8" and "kid," saying that his whole family has struggled to find time to grieve in the midst of the media hullaballoo and the battle over Coleman's estate.
Coleman came into the family's life while in Salt Lake City on the set of the 2006 film "Church Ball." Sam Price said he and his sister went to the set just to check things out and ended up meeting Coleman.
"The first thing Gary told Shannon was 'You're too beautiful; you need to go home. You don't need to be here,' " Sam Price recounted. "I don't think she knew what to say, I think it caught her off-guard."
Price said his daughter didn't know who Coleman was, much less the extent of his fame. But Coleman had had a dream about a redheaded woman whom he would spend his life with and knew it was Shannon Price as soon as he saw her.
Coleman was respectful and cordial from the get-go and the only real issue Dale Price said he had with the pairing was their decision to move in together.
"I told Gary, 'I'm not too thrilled with some of these arrangements' and he was very respectful. He said, 'Dale, I give you my word that I will take care of your daughter and there will not be anything going on against your wishes.' "
For the first few years the two were happy. They traveled around the country and worked on building a life together in Santaquin. "There was nothing about Utah he didn't love." Price said Coleman was a fan of the people, the mountains, even the LDS culture.
"He loved the Mormon culture," Dale Price said. "He told me 'When you're around me, you can be as Mormony as you want.' Gary never drank, never smoked, never did drugs. Gary pretty much lived a Mormon lifestyle except he didn't really believe in God."
According to Sam Price, Coleman always wanted to marry Shannon Price on her birthday and he did just that when the two were wed on Aug. 28, 2007. Dale Price said the two were "whisked away" by helicopter to Valley of Fire State Park where they had a small wedding in front of clergy, a photographer and the helicopter pilot. He didn't even know the two had married until his daughter showed him her ring two weeks later.
But the pair's union drew media attention primarily due to the couple's age and height differences and, later, its sometimes violent nature. Police in Utah County responded to incidents involving Coleman at least 20 times and her father conceded that both had "volatile tempers," but both he and his son insisted the couple were never violent toward one another.
"They didn't take it out on each other," Sam Price said. "They'd throw things all around, Gary'd punch a hole in the wall, but they never physically hit each other."
Dale Price said that negative gets overplayed by the media and pales in comparison to the love the two had for each other.
"You know, there's a lot more good things that happened in their relationship than the bad things," he said. "Her and Gary were a lot closer than people ever realized. His last words were 'I love you' and that was to Shannon."
The two apparently wanted to adopt, but were waiting until Shannon Price turned 25. Coleman's limit was two and he said a nanny would be necessary — he "didn't want to change any diapers" — but that hope died with Coleman.
Ultimately the marriage ended in divorce in 2008, which was not revealed to the public until after Coleman's death. Price said that the divorce came at his daughter's request and that while Gary did not like the idea, he "understood her reasons." He said the pair never separated or lived apart, though, and had even been talking about renewing their vows.
Even now, after Coleman's death, media attention surrounding the couple continues.
Shannon Price has been criticized for photos of Coleman in his final moments that were sold to a tabloid — photos her father said were taken at Shannon Price's request by a family friend as personal mementos of Coleman's last days but were never meant to be sold. Dale Price said his family was hurt and angered by their release.
Shannon Price is also locked in a custody battle over Coleman's estate with Anna Gray, a woman who Dale Price said was never romantic with Coleman and "doesn't give a rat's rear end about Gary."
But Dale Price said it's less about whatever money Coleman might have to his name and more about laying him to rest.
"We want Gary's ashes," he said.
Coleman was "an aficionado of trains" who often spent entire nights with his ex-wife watching them come and go. The family wants to place part of the ashes in Hawaii, as Coleman had once asked, and the rest over the golden spike at Promontory Point in northern Utah. They've even discussed taking his ashes on a train ride to Denver — one that Coleman had long talked about but never got to take.
"About a week ago, (Shannon) said, 'I am going to do everything I can and fight for Gary like I know he would want me to. If it's anybody else, I wouldn't do it, but because I love Gary and I know he would want me to do this, I am going to do this and I don't care how much it costs or much time. I just want to make sure we do everything we can for Gary.' "
e-mail: emorgan@desnews.com; ashaha@desnews.com