Farah Fawcett's Impact - Milwaukee

FARRAH'S FATE: There has been so much reporting this week of Farrah Fawcett's fight with cancer that you wonder what's left to say. But the big event on TV tonight is still going to be "Farrah's Story," a two-hour special report on NBC beginning at 9 p.m.

Much of it features personal home footage filmed by the former "Charlie's Angel" and a family friend. NBC paid Fawcett an undisclosed sum for the material.

The 62 year old Fawcett, one of the iconic pop culture figures of the 1970s, reportedly is near death. The bedridden former sex symbol has lost her trademark golden hair and is under doctors' care in her home.

Tonight's special includes interview with her longtime companion, Ryan O'Neal, and former "Angels" Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith. It also recounts her 2 1/2-year battle with anal cancer that has spread to other parts of her body.

GOKEY'S GLASSES: Ousted "American Idol" Danny Gokey says he would like to have a line of eyewear to help make eyeglasses cool for kids. The 28-year-old choir director from Milwaukee also envisions concerts with life-changing messages in honor of his wife, Sophia, who died during heart surgery. Read the interview on TBO.com.

MILWAUKEE - Every teen girl wanted her hairstyle. Every teenage boy wanted her poster. But long after her days of an angel, Farrah Fawcett found a different way to touch the masses: Her starring role in the TV movie, ‘The Burning Bed’.

Fawcett played a tattered wife who eventually murders her husband. ‘The Burning Bed’ was released in 1984. At that time Dolly Grimes-Johnson worked as a family advocate at the Sojourner Truth House in Milwaukee, a shelter for battered women.

"Listening to the horrible, horrible abuse that women would talk about, I certainly wanted them to see that movie, and get some reaction from them."

Dolly says the movie started a national conversation and brought a new face to the stereotyped image of battered women.

Back then, she says, no one considered that white women in the suburbs could also be victims of horrible domestic abuse. Fawcett's character hit home. Those women started reporting their abuse and coming to Sojourner Truth House for help.

The shelter went through a boom, and to this day remains at capacity helping women, who feel helpless.

So now, as Dolly watches coverage of Farrah Fawcett's fight for life she remembers a woman who found fame as an angel...then saved countless others from a life of pure hell.

You can contact the Sojourner Truth House at (414) 933-2722.