Golden anniversary

It’s hard to believe, but Christmas Eve was the 50th anniversary of the Lennon Sisters’ television debut.

When the quartet of sisters from Venice, Calif., first appeared on “The Lawrence Welk Show” in 1955, it was Diane, Kathy, Peggy and Janet. Because they started 50 years ago, everyone thinks they are in their 70s, but when they made their TV debut, Janet was 9 and Kathy was 12.

Diane retired some years ago, preferring private life to singing onstage. When Peggy later made the same decision, younger sister Mimi stepped up; for the past several years, the Lennon Sisters have been performing in Branson, Mo.

Q: Does it feel like 50 years since you began your career?

Janet: We started when we were so young, and we never really had this burning desire to be onstage or on television, but it just kept happening. So we always say, we’re famous and still working in spite of ourselves, because this wouldn’t probably be anything we would have chosen as children to do when we grew up.

Q: Some people can’t get along with one sister, seeing them just once or twice a year. What can we learn from you?

Janet: We learned growing up at home – there’s 11 of us – Mom told us her home was going to be filled with love, and there would be no arguing, because there were too many of us and we didn’t have time for arguing. And we took that into our singing with us, and into our performing. We didn’t have jealousies because none of us cared if any of us was the star or not.

Kathy: And Mom and Dad made it such a normal childhood even though we were doing Perry Como shows and Ed Sullivan shows and a weekly television show every Saturday night for 13 years, and then our own shows. We would sing and then go home and do dishes and change younger siblings’ diapers and do our homework and go to regular school.

We had a rule that minority rules: if any one of us was uncomfortable with a business decision, the other three would say, “OK, if you feel it’s that important.” It wasn’t about winning; it was about peace.

Q: How did you escape the seeming curses that follow most child performers?

Janet: We had a loving environment everywhere we went. We went from a wonderful sheltered home to an environment on the Welk show for 13 years, where the orchestra were like our big brothers and none of the crew swore around us. Growing up on the show, we had this environment around us until we were in our 20s.

Q: The only thing harder than going through adolescence is doing it on camera, in front of everybody.

Janet: I wore braids until I was 14. I have nightmares of braids, I really, really do. When we started, I was 9, but I looked about 6. My dad said, “Keep wearing the braids. People like the ponytails.” So I wore them until I was in high school.

Q: Was it hard on the playground on Mondays, after having been the Lennon Sisters on TV on Saturday night?

Kathy: We got a lot of razzing as we got older, 15, 16, 17, and we’re still dancing around toadstools at Easter time, and then we’d go out on a date to the homecoming dance. We had a lot of joking, but we’d grown up with all of the kids in Catholic grammar school and high school – they were all our friends.

Q: You had to suffer a personal loss in the public eye, when your dad, Bill, was killed 35 years ago.

Kathy: Dad was always such a trusting soul, and this Lennon Sisters fan who was very demented escaped from an insane asylum, thought he was married to our sister Peggy and had been writing her kook letters for years. He’d stalked our family at the house and our church and thought Daddy was keeping Peggy from him. Daddy was a golf pro, and this man found him on the golf course and shot and killed him in August of 1969.

For us to have to be in the public eye after that was horrendous. Mom was still at home with seven children, and this man was on the run for two or three months. We all moved into Mom’s home because the SWAT police couldn’t stay at all of our homes. We all slept on the floor and had policemen everywhere in the back yard, and it was a very trying time.

And Mom was just a rock, and she would be consoling us and other people. And although this man finally took his own life, it was very hard for us to go back on stage and be close to people, for about a year.

Q: And this 50th anniversary is a bittersweet milestone.

Kathy: Yes, our mother, “Sis,” passed away in the spring, and the memorial service was a few months later. It was a shock. We would have loved to have her see this. We all miss her.