Not all of Ricky and Kristin’s children were caught up in the family drama. Their first three kids all managed to escape much of the family drama since they were much older. Their first child, daughter Tracy Nelson, followed similarly in her family’s footsteps and became an actress.
She got started with her acting career before other people even start crawling, considering that at the age of three months old, she appeared on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. At the age of four, she was once again on television when she played in Yours, Mine and Ours as the daughter of Lucille Ball. She eventually went on to study ballet for 17 years and studied dance in college.
“Too Much Blood Has Been Spilled”
The trial got so intense to the point where Mark Harmon's wife, actress Pam Dawber was accused of being a drug addict herself. The trial was eventually called off on day three after those involved realized that it would be detrimental to their careers in show business to continue.
Mark apparently went up to Kristin’s attorney and said, “We don’t want to go any further with this. Too much blood has been spilled.” After word got out about this, people who watched the trial said things like, “They’re obviously more concerned about their own careers than they are about the boy’s welfare” and, “This was a typical family dispute and it should have been settled around the dining room table.”
The Result
Once the custody battle was over, Kristin maintained custody of her youngest son with Ricky. Uncle Mark Harmon was allotted visitation rights and Kris, Sam, and Mark all agreed to go to family therapy. As he grew older, Sam would appear as himself in documentaries about his family.
Nowadays, the internet reports that Sam is an actor. He reportedly started a band called H is Orange. He also has written two books called The Addict, which “cuts through gender, racial, and generational gaps to expose the cause of addictions,” and Quandles: An Introduction to the Algebra of Knots.
Tracy Nelson
Tracy acted on the sitcom Square Pegs alongside Sarah Jessica Parker in the 1980's. She played the “valley girl” Jennifer DeNuccio. During this time, she experienced her breakthrough role in film after she starred in Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills. She gained more popularity after starring in The Father Dowling Mysteries, in which she played the role as Sister Stephanie.
As a member of television’s Nelson family, she would go on to guest star in other classic family sitcoms such as Family Ties, The Nanny, 7th Heaven, Melrose Place, Seinfeld, and St. Elsewhere. But eventually, Tracy's life would take a turn for the worse...
Cancer
Just two years after the death of her father, Ricky, and shortly after she married actor Billy Moses, she began to feel weak. She had a dream in which her father told her "I know you miss me, but it’s not time for you to die. You have to go see a doctor". Unfortunately, in 1987, doctors found a small tumor in her chest, which turned out to be stage two Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
She said that her illness was the result of stress over her youngest brother's custody battle. Although she was able to overcome the cancer, the radiation she was exposed to led her to develop another cancer years later. In 2005, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2005 and then breast cancer in 2010.