Frank Dicopoulos recalls ‘Guiding Light’ story that led to baby-naming trend

When you hear the name “Daisy”, what comes to my mind? The Grand Gatsby? Princess Peach brunette sister Mario games? A flower? If you were a young parent at the end of the 80s, it could be Guiding light.

Frank Dicopoulos, who played the character Frank Cooper for more than 30 years on long -term but not forgotten day soap, recently thought about his heritage for Magazine Reminder.

“”Guiding light was one of the most realistic shows and honest shows that did not make too much madness, “said Dicopoulos – perhaps forgetting Frank Beaty as a Brent Lawrence / Marion Crane’s killer or the plot of Bomb Naked by Stephen Joyce as Eli Sims.

“The scenario of Lillian Raines cancer (Tina Sloan) was important. And when Beth Ehlers came, his character Harley was pregnant and we had the decision to keep the baby or not,” Dicopoulos continued. “She has chosen to keep the baby and to this day, I cannot tell you the number of people who come and say that they have named their child Daisy after Harley’s baby, or they have kept the child because she decided to have the child. Now, if that doesn’t breathe, I don’t know what is doing.”

Frank de Dicopoulos was presented in 1987 alongside his teenage sister, Harley Cooper of Ehlers. Harley’s dying deliberation on how to proceed with her pregnancy drew the attention of Guiding light The public, even on the characters, they have been following for decades. In September 1987, Susan “Daisy” Lemay was born on a highway after Harley and Frank put himself in a car accident on the way to the hospital.

Social Security Administration data (via Babycenter.com) reveals that only 444 babies per million, Daisy was one of its lowest popularity points in more than 100 years. But the following year, the name jumped almost 50% to 655, and at the end of the decade, had reached a level of saturation which he had not appreciated since 1935 – although there is no say how much Drive Miss DaisyThe release of 1989 in 1989 was on this 1990 count.

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Although this is not the first soap opera, Guiding light has the distinction of being the oldest scripted program in the history of American dissemination. The series started as a NBC radio series called The guideline In 1937 before going to television in 1952. The series crossed the transition to color, the rise of the cable and the soap explosion as General hospital And Days of our lives In the 1960s, but was finally canceled in 2009.

Dicopoulos played an important role in the second half of the long life of the series as Frank Achille Cooper Jr., who has progressed from the mechanics of modest cars and sometimes owner of Chop-Shop to the esteem of the Police of the program, in Illinois.

Among his most proud achievements are alongside future stars like Murray Bartlett, who played Cyrus Foley (“he was a really, really nice guy”) and Matt Bomer, who played Ben Reade (“I saw him recently and it was big hugs”). But he reserved special praise for Brittany Snow, who played his Daisy niece from 1998 to 2001 and who says that Dicopoulos is now “K — ING ASS”.