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Butch Patrick is mourning the loss of his beloved pal.

Lisa Loring, recognized by fans as the original Wednesday Addams from the classic TV adaptation of “The Addams Family,” passed away on Saturday at age 64. The actress died of complications from a stroke caused by high blood pressure, her daughter Vanessa Foumberg told The Hollywood Reporter.

Lisa Loring, who played Wednesday Addams in the classic TV show “The Addams Family,” passed away on Saturday. She was 64.
(Getty Images)

“My initial reaction was one of sadness,” Patrick, who famously played Eddie Munster in “The Munsters,” told Fox News Digital. “And at the same time, it didn’t come unexpectedly. She had been in failing health for a while. I knew she was weak. But at the same time, I’m really happy that she’s out of pain. I’m a big believer in spirituality and the afterlife, so I’m happy she’s in a better place. But I miss her. We had a long, long friendship. We did lots of great things and had wonderful adventures together.”

The former child stars first met at Paul Petersen’s home sometime in 1985. Peterson, also a former child star, later formed A Minor Consideration, a child-actor support group in Hollywood.

‘MUNSTERS’ STAR BUTCH PATRICK RECALLS HIT ’60S SERIES: ‘WE WERE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH A LOT MORE’

Lisa Loring played Wednesday Addams in the television series “The Addams Family.” Her pal Butch Patrick played Eddie Munster in “The Munsters.”
(Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images)

“I immediately said, ‘Oh my God, what a beautiful woman,’” Patrick chuckled. “We did some shows together because any promoter in their right mind would love to have Wednesday Addams and Eddie Munster in the same room to promote an appearance. And that’s where it started. The more we worked together, the closer we got and the deeper the friendship bond became.”

According to the 69-year-old, his favorite memory of Loring is when their characters said “I do” to the delight of fans in 1997.

“There was a gentleman in Pittsburgh, Tony Greco, the world’s biggest ‘Munsters’ collector,” Patrick recalled. “He was a friend to everybody. A buddy of his was going to open a nightclub called Heaven… I go, ‘How would you like to have Eddie Munster and Wednesday Addams – a match made in Heaven?’ And he goes, ‘That sounds like a great event!’”

“So I contacted Lisa and she loved the idea,” he shared. “She came and looked beautiful. We had rings and a DJ dressed as a pope who performed the ceremony. We had 5,000 people attend this massive mock wedding of Eddie Munster and Wednesday Addams. It was such a good time.”

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Lisa Loring attends the Chiller Theatre Expo Halloween on Oct. 29, 2022, in Parsippany, New Jersey. She remained devoted to her fans over the years.
( Photo by Bobby Bank/Getty Images)

Patrick said he last saw Loring in November. The pair made an appearance at an autograph signing in Anaheim, California.

“Lisa was sitting next to me, so we had a couple of days to just chat,” he recalled. “That’s when I was very concerned about her. She was in a wheelchair and her strength wasn’t what it was. I could see it. But I was hoping she was going to recover… She was only 64 years old. She left us way too young. Too soon.”

“I think when her husband Graham passed away last year, that took a lot of joy from her life,” said Patrick. “They were divorced, but she still cared for him very much.”

Today, Patrick hopes fans will remember Loring for being “a very wonderful soul who loved her daughters.”

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Lisa Loring and Butch Patrick starred in their spooky sitcoms during the ’60s.
(Getty Images)

“She was always appreciative of her success and her life,” said Patrick while fighting back tears. “She was very proud of what she had done… Her talent, even at a young age, came so naturally to her. She had such a strong presence as Wednesday Addams, which is quite an achievement to pull off as a little girl. I’m just happy to have known her. We were both Hollywood kids and had parallel lifestyles. But we also had a really good time on this ride.”

“It can be tough sometimes in Hollywood,” he reflected. “But she survived. And I’m happy she found peace.”

Loring first took on the role of pigtailed Wednesday in 1964. She began working on the live-action TV adaptation of Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons when she was just 5. The show aired at the same time as the fellow spooky sitcom “The Munsters.”

While Loring only played the character for two years, her performance set the template for live-action portrayals. She was recently praised for inspiring Jenna Ortega’s interpretation of the role for the Netflix series “Wednesday.”

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John Astin, who played patriarch Gomez Addams, is the last surviving member of the original cast.
(ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

John Astin, who played Gomez Addams, is the last surviving member of the original cast.

Following her success on TV, Loring kept busy appearing in a series of slashers during the ‘80s. Her last credited role was that of Miss Rhonda in 2015’s “Doctor Spine.”

Loring is survived by two daughters and two grandchildren.

The Omaha Police Department has identified two officers involved in a shootout during an attempted burglary at storage facility Monday. 

The department said the officers are Nicholas Lanning and Joshua Moore. 

L-R: Omaha officers Nicholas Lanning and Joshua Moore. 
(Omaha PD)

The officers responded to Dino’s Storage at 5328 Center Street around 10:30 p.m. Monday for a burglary in progress, police said. 

The officers entered the facility with the assistance of the property manager and attempted to engage the suspect. The suspect, later identified as 38-year-old Steven Docken, was still inside an open storage unit, police said. 

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Docken ran down a hallway upon seeing the officers. The officers ran after Docken and, after catching up with him, a physical altercation ensued. 

Gunfire was exchanged, and both officers were shot in their lower extremities. Docken was struck “multiple times” and was killed, police said. Investigators found a handgun at the scene. 

Steven Docken served at least two stints in prison. 
(Omaha PD)

The officers were taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries, police said. 

The department told Fox News Digital that Lanning has since been released from the hospital. Officer Moore is being held for observation for “possible surgery,” but is considered stable, the department said. 

Officer Lanning has seven years of service, and Officer Moore has one year of service, the department said. 

Docken served two stints in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, the Omaha World-Herald reported. He was recently released in December 2021 after spending two years on drug-related charges. He also served time between December 2013 and June 2017 after being convicted of theft and a gun charge.

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The Nebraska State Patrol and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office were expected to be involved in the investigation. Both officers were wearing body cameras and security video from the storage business was made available for review.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Teachers and policy experts are pushing back after the state of Minnesota’s education licensing board voted to overhaul their standards and require new teachers to adopt core aspects of critical race theory and gender ideology.

According to the updated “Standards of Effective Practice,” promulgated by Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), educators are required to commit to affirming various and “diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, sexual identity, ability,” etc. in the classroom to be licensed educators.

The new passages added to existing standards with several multiple passages suggesting teachers need to affirm “students’ background and identities” to acquire a teaching license in the state. The rules will go into effect by 2025.

Rebecca Friedrichs, a twenty-eight-year public school teacher and the founder of “For Kids and Country,” told Fox News Digital that every single “buzzword” from the far-left political agenda is listed in the new standards.

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Yorba Linda, CA, Tuesday, November 16, 2021 – The Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban teaching critical race theory in schools.  
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“We are hired to educate children, not push a political agenda. And we are hired to serve children and their parents and work in connection with them,” she said. 

The document states that teachers must cultivate “opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities” and mold their students to become “agents of social change to promote equity.”

In addition, teachers are told to learn and understand the impacts of “systemic trauma” and how racism and “micro and macro aggressions” contribute to adverse learning outcomes.

“We’re being told by a teaching licensing board, and by a union that claims to represent us, and by legislators that claim to represent we the people—that we’re forced to do this,” Friedrichs said.

She added that teachers in the state are “trapped” and must choose to either lose their jobs or do things against their own conscience or even common sense and science.

Friedrichs also claimed that many of the problems in Minnesota and schools across the country are the fault of teachers’ unions. She described a system in which unions and their friends put into office the people the unions choose, not necessarily the people that teachers or citizens want.

In Minnesota, governors can appoint the governing boards that come up with the teachers’ licensing standards.

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Residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, helped make critical race theory a national conversation in 2021. 
(REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

Teachers’ unions in the state spend millions on glossy flyers with “cleverly written language” to confuse people to vote against their values and get the governor of their choice into office, according to Friedrichs.

She claimed that the entire board that came up with this Minnesota teacher licensing is politicized, being funded and promoted and lobbied by the very people that put them into office or put into office the people who appointed them, while teachers are ignored.

“This is called bullying. These are mafia tactics. This is being run by a cartel,” Friedrichs said.

Catrin Wigfall, a Policy Fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, told Fox News Digital that the new rule changes will affect any aspiring teacher in the state, whether they work for public or private schools. It will also impact teachers getting a license through teacher prep providers, those completing an initial T3 license, including adult learners who do not go through traditional additional preparation programs.

She said that the rule changes could violate teachers’ religious liberties and exacerbate teachers’ shortages.

The changes also present a grey area regarding whether the rule changes when it comes to current teachers trying to renew their licenses. PELSB has said that these standards will not impact licensing renewal processes, but the American experiment is skeptical because of ambiguous language pulled from and inspired by Illinois.

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Illinois has similar board rule changes that apply to current teachers. Several other states are expected to follow suit.

The board rule changes in Minnesota are approved not by legislatures but by a chief administrative law judge who will review these changes and identify whether they are within the scope of the board and approve or disapprove them.

The rule changes should not impact curriculum, which is determined by school boards and do not impact standards and best practices which the department of education reviews. However, they do set the tone and establish the framework for the mindset of educators.

Wigfall said the affirmations present in the new standard could violate religious liberties, which PELSB has refuted in post-public comments. Additionally, they could discourage teachers from a wide variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds from entering the profession when the state is trying to increase diversity. She said that court action is coming down the pipeline from educators soon impacted by the rule changes.

Wigfall took issue with a passage that said to empower learners to be “agents of social change.” She said the language is concerning because it will encourage teachers to turn students into activists, which is different from the goal of education. That part was originally disapproved by a judge but was overturned by the chief administrative law judge.

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Wigfall took issue with a passage that said to empower learners to be “agents of social change.”
(iStock / Amazon)

“I fear that the classroom will be encouraged to be a space for students to become social justice activists, social justice warriors, and that I think will politicize the classroom and turn it into an ideological battleground,” she said.

Wigfall added that teachers are being asked to prioritize political and social activism in classrooms at a time when like Minnesota, Illinois students are underperforming on basic skills tests.

Friedrichs said teachers need to disengage from the unions if they are interested in combating the new standards.

She said that teachers are trapped in the “unionized monopoly,” and many don’t know that they are no longer required to pay the unions anymore.

Friedrichs and nine other California teachers previously brought a lawsuit against the unions and on June 27, 2018, teachers were freed from forced unionism.

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Most people don’t know they’ve been freed because the unions passed all kinds of laws in many states that say government employers are not allowed to tell the employees that they have been freed of the union, according to Friedrichs.

“They might harass you, they’ll probably bully you, but we have to be courageous and stand up against these wicked people who are truly damaging our kids and our freedoms,” she said.