Roger Mobley

Roger Lance Mobley (born January 16, 1949) is a former child actor in the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 100 television appearances and co-starred in nine feature films in a nine-year career. He joined the Green Berets (46th Special Forces Company) during the Vietnam War, and was subsequently a police officer in Beaumont, Texas.
Background.
Mobley is one of eight children of Arthur Lance Mobley and Charlene V. Mobley. Lance Mobley, as the father was known, was born in Centralia in southern Illinois, and a retired pipefitter at the time of his death in a hospital in Beaumont, Texas. Charlene and he married in 1939, when he was 17, and she was 15. The couple moved from Indiana in the early 1950s to Pecos in Reeves County in West Texas before they headed in 1957 to Whittier, near Los Angeles. 
Charlene Mobley was born in rural Oil City, Louisiana. For many years, she was a real estate agent in Beaumont and then Vidor, Texas. For most of her life, she was a lay preacher in various churches in the communities in which the Mobleys resided. The senior Mobleys are interred in Vidor at Restlawn Cemetery.
Acting.
Mobley (pronounced "Mob'-ly" in real life but "Mobe'-ly" as a performer at the behest of studio executives who disliked the way the former sounds) sang with his older brother and sister in The Little Mobley Trio in Texas where the family then lived. After moving to California when Mobley was six or seven, the trio appeared on the "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour" with disappointing results.
They were spotted, though, by Lola Moore, then the pre-eminent agent for child actors, who expressed an interest in Roger and arranged his audition for the part of eight-year-old Homer "Packy" Lambert in the NBC Saturday-morning Western television series, "Fury", starring Peter Graves, Bobby Diamond, and William Fawcett. He appeared in 38 episodes of the series.
Many of Mobley's subsequent myriad television guest appearances were also in Westerns, but he was capable of playing against type, such as his 1963 role of the troubled youngster Joby Paxton in the episode "Somehow It Gets to Be Tomorrow" of CBS's "Route 66". 
In 1960, Mobley was cast as young Matt Denby, Jr., in the episode, "The Madstone" of the syndicated anthology series, "Death Valley Days", hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, young Denby is bitten by a rabid skunk and must get the madstone of his maternal grandfather, Caleb Reese (George Macready, which is then the only treatment for hydrophobia. Myron Healey played Denby's father, whose wife stays behind in Texas, while he seeks to start a new ranch in the New Mexico Territory. Denby, Sr., is alienated from his father-in-law, but the two make amends as the episode ends. 
In 1964, after having been impressed with Mobley's performance as Gustav in "Emil and the Detectives", Walt Disney signed him to the title role in the highly acclaimed and Emmy-nominated "Adventures of Gallegher" serials for the "Wonderful World of Color". Gallegher is an amateur sleuth newspaper reporter, a character created by author Richard Harding Davis. Contrary to popular rumor, Mobley's name was what Walt Disney wrote on his last memo.
After 9 years and appearances in 118 television programs or feature films, Mobley's career was interrupted at the age of 18 by military service. Mobley was quoted, accordingly: "Uncle Walt [Disney] had plans for me, but so did Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam won."
Personal life.
Mobley graduated from Whittier Christian High School in La Habra in Orange County, California, at which he played football. On June 7, 1968, he married his high-school sweetheart, the former Sharie Barclay, whom he had met in the eighth grade. The Mobleys have three children: Rebekah Mobley Justice, Elizabeth Mobley, and Matthew Jason Mobley (born 1972), formerly a first lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan.
Military service.
In 1968, Mobley was drafted into the United States Army. After boot camp at Fort Ord, California, Mobley requested his term of service be extended to qualify for training in Special Forces. He completed parachute jump training at Fort Benning, Georgia, after having volunteered for the Special Forces training at the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On completion of his training, Mobley was assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne), 1st Special Forces Group. He returned to the United States in November 1970.
Back in civilian life, Mobley discovered only $6,000 had been set aside from his extensive work as a child actor. He and his bride, Sharie, relocated to Beaumont, Texas, where he joined the police department. He was also a criminal investigator for the cities of Vidor and Jasper, Texas.
Multiple jobs.
Besides law enforcement, Mobley worked many blue-collar jobs, including pipefitter, longshoreman, welder, bull rider, lumberjack, milk-delivery driver, Federal Express truck driver, prison guard, and lifeguard. He was a football/basketball coach at a private school in Beaumont. He was employed as a climber/inspector on wind turbine farms around the nation before retiring. As of 2015, Mobley was living in Arkansas and operating a log skidder for a logging company.
Political and religious beliefs.
According to his autobiographical sketch on his Facebook page, Mobley is a Christian conservative who opposes legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and divorce. He calls the Bible his favorite book. He is a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.