Danielle Spencer, the actress who played Raj’s sarcastic little sister Deadra “Dee” Thomas on What’s Happening!!, passed away Monday. August 11th. She was 60 years old.
The news was posted by her former What’s Happening!! co-star Haywood Nelson on Instagram Tuesday.
“Dr. Dee, our brilliant, loving, positive, pragmatic warrior, without fail, has finally found her release from the clutches of this world and a body,” he wrote. “We celebrate Danielle Spencer and her contributions as we regret to inform her departure and transition from a long battle with cancer.
“We have lost a daughter, sister, family member, What’s Happening cast member, veterinarian animal rights proponent and healer, and cancer heroine. Our Shero. Danielle is loved. She will be missed in this form and forever embraced.”
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Spencer’s catchphrase on the show was, “Oooh, I’m gonna tell my momma!” which people used to say back to her decades after the show ended.
Her True Mission in Life
After the show, she left showbiz to pursue her education at Tuskegee University where she completed a degree in veterinary science and became a veterinarian. The now-married 56-year-old Dr. Spencer couldn’t be happier.
“I knew I wanted to work with animals but I didn’t know in what capacity. But I always loved animals,” confesses Spencer. “They were my closest friends sometimes growing up.
I was so happy to be able to be a veterinarian because I wasn’t doing much acting once the show went off the air. It’s good being able to make a living doing something that I love.”
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Her Ongoing Health Struggles
But her transition from entertainment to animal medicine wasn’t always a smooth one.
In 1977, Spencer was in a car accident that took the life of her stepfather. Symptoms of spinal cord injury showed up 26 years later, eventually leaving her near-paralysis for about eight months where she had to learn how to walk again.
Turns out a disc in her back from the 1977 accident had calcified through the decades and was pressing against her nerve. She was informed by her doctor that she would never walk again unless she has an operation to remove the disc.
She stayed out of the tapings for the show for 6 months and had to initially film several of her What’s Happening scenes sitting down.
Spencer had been suffering from spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal column that puts pressure on nerves (doctors believe it could stem from a childhood car accident). Unable to move her legs after surgery to treat the condition, Spencer, then 46, fell into a deep depression as her numbness turned into unmanageable, chronic back pain.
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Bolstered by the support of her husband and her mom Cheryl Pelt, Spencer sought treatment at New Jersey’s Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, which had also treated Christopher Reeve. The veterinarian says the day she was accepted into the program, “the depression lifted.” She still has bouts with walking and at times has to use the assistance of a cane.
Her Fight With Breast Cancer was a Hard One
If that injury wasn’t enough, Spencer was diagnosed with breast cancer and revealed in 2014 that she was going under the knife to remove the cancer.
Like many women who suffer through breast cancer, Spencer has a family history of the disease.
“With everything that I’ve been through with the spinal cord injury, I know God is not going to give me another affliction. So I was completely shocked when the doctors told me,” says Spencer.
In a 2015 Facebook post, Spencer reported that she was doing fine and thanked everyone for their prayers. She is still a veterinarian and loving the married life with her husband, David.
How She Wants to be Remembered
But don’t worry, despite all that she’s been through, she was inducted into the Smithsonian Museum in the exhibition of the African-American culture! Spencer is the only child star to be inducted.
“I still can’t believe it,” she says. “That’s something people can look at for years to come, long after I’m gone.”
Danielle Spencer’s brother, Jeremy Pelt, paid tribute to his older sister in a heartbreaking post on Instagram.
“August 11, 2025 will forever be a reminder of the day that I lost a big part of myself. After many years, my big sister, Dr. Danielle Louise Spencer lost her battle with cancer,” he wrote in the post, alongside several pictures of himself with Spencer.
“Many of you knew her as “Dee”, but she was more than a child actress. She was a friend, an auntie to my three children who adored her, she was a daughter- and in many ways, my mother’s best friend, she was a veterinarian, she was someone who always remained positive even during her darkest days fighting this disease. And she was MY sister and protector,” added Pelt a distinguished jazz trumpeter. “I love you, forever.”
