 After completing high school, John-Boy attends fictional Boatwright University in the fictional nearby town of Westham.He later goes to New York City to work as a journalist.During the latter half of the 1976–77 season, Grandma Esther Walton suffers a stroke and returns home shortly before the death of her husband, Grandpa Zeb Walton (reflecting Ellen Corby's real-life stroke and the death of Will Geer, the actors who portrayed the characters).