Rachel Longaker

As a special school activity, Miss Beadle allows the children to create group skits that they will later perform for their parents. Mary and Laura team up with Nellie and Ginny Clark, a lonely young girl whose widowed mother has been neglecting her daughter's emotional needs. Meanwhile, Willie is having trouble getting the other boys to perform "Tom Sawyer" with him.

A fierce hawk threatens peace on the Walton farm, and a handsome new minister is chosen for the Walton community.

As Mary Ellen's baby comes due, one of her friends' baby is born prematurely and stillborn. Out of grief, she torments Mary Ellen with talk of bad omens and portents about Mary Ellen's baby. Jason gets a job at the burlesque theater. Mary Ellen gives birth, but a grieving neighbor steals the baby. The leader of a gospel choir hears Jason play at the burlesque theater and offers him a job.

Olivia returns to find her family deeply involved in the war effort. When the Satterfields receive news of the death of their son, John is told he can expect to pay this loss with the life of one of his own sons. Jim-Bob is threatened by the father of a man who lost his son in the war--after John approved the boy's draft by the military. But the news that John-Boy has been taken as a prisoner of war in Europe brings the families together in their grief.

Jim-Bob fixes up Ike's old motorcyle & he enters a motorcyle race. The Godsey's want to adopt a baby but instead adopt a young girl named Aimee

Elizabeth loses the use of her legs in an accident, and the Walton family members adjust to the tragedy in their own ways. Elizabeth's broken leg bones heal, but she is still unable to walk.