Skip Hinnant

Joseph Howard Hinnant was born on 12 September 1940 to John Fletcher Hinnant and Bertha Leonna Hinnant and was raised on Chincoteague Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. His older sister, Leonna Jean, gave him the nickname Skip, and it was the name he used for the rest of his life. He looked up to his older brother, John Fletcher Hinnant Jr, who as Bill Hinnant became a stage and screen actor, and Skip followed him to Yale University, graduating in 1962, and then on to New York City to pursue acting.

Hinnant's first major television role was Ted, the boyfriend of Cathy, on The Patty Duke Show in the early 1960s. In 1963 he performed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner for President John F. Kennedy as part of the Julius Monk revue Struts and Frets. In 1967 he originated the role of Schroeder in the original off Broadway cast of Clark Gesner's musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which his brother Bill played Snoopy.

From 1971 to 1977 he was a member of the original repertory cast of The Electric Company on PBS, the Children's Television Workshop series designed to teach reading. Among many characters he was best known as Fargo North, Decoder, a play on Fargo, North Dakota, and as The Boy in the soap opera satire Love of Chair, as well as Jay Jay and other recurring parts.

In a striking contrast with his children's work, he provided the voice of Fritz in Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat in 1972 and in The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat in 1974. He voiced Sunny the Easter Bunny in the Rankin/Bass stop motion special The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town in 1977 and Pogo Possum in I Go Pogo in 1980. Later screen appearances included 3-2-1 Contact, As the World Turns and Kate and Allie. From around 1990 he concentrated on voice work, becoming a prolific voice in television and radio commercials and a narrator of children's books, and he appeared in Electric Company retrospectives in 2006.

Hinnant was active in Actors' Equity, AFTRA and the Screen Actors Guild, serving on the national board of SAG from 1980 to 2003 in several leadership roles. He was especially proud of his work to preserve commercial voice contracts and to defend the rights of everyday actors.

In 1962, the year he graduated from Yale, Hinnant married Miriam Dildilian. They raised four children, Chris, Jamie, Julie and Sara, in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the couple later separated, they remained close friends. In 1985 he met Ruth Nerken, and they shared three decades together in New York City as best friends and companions. He travelled often to see his children and loved hosting family reunions in his childhood home on Chincoteague, and his favourite role was that of Pop-pop to his nine grandchildren.

Skip Hinnant died peacefully on 8 November 2026 in Denver, Colorado, surrounded by his family. He was 86. He was predeceased by his parents and by his siblings Leonna Jean Godey and Bill Hinnant. He is survived by Ruth Nerken, Miriam Hinnant, his four children and their spouses, and nine grandchildren. His family planned a private celebration of life in Chincoteague, Virginia, and asked that donations be made in his name to the Entertainment Community Fund or the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.

For many Americans who grew up in the 1970s, Hinnant's voice and comic timing are bound up with learning to read, thanks to Fargo North and the other characters he played on The Electric Company. His stage work in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, his cult voice role as Fritz the Cat and his decades of advocacy for performers through the Screen Actors Guild form a varied legacy, remembered by those who knew him for his quick wit and his generosity toward fellow entertainers.