Born Woodrow Tracy Harrelson in Midland, Texas, he moved to Lebanon at age 12 with his mother, Diane Lou Oswald, and his brothers after his parents divorced. Lebanon is his mother’s hometown, and she is also is a graduate of Lebanon High School, (Class if 1955).
His mother got a job working as a legal assistant for the law firm of Ruppert, Bronson, and Chicarelli in Franklin.
The Oscar nominated actor was in Drama Club and Lebanon Singers during his high school days.
Wayne Dunn, a retired Lebanon High School English teacher, directed Harrelson in a supporting role in the musical “Li’l Abner” during Harrelson’s senior year and kept a poster signed by Harrelson and the rest of the cast.
“He had quite a sense of presence,” Dunn once told the Dayton Daily News about Harrelson. “He was a very good student and very intelligent. People always think he’s a hayseed because of ‘Cheers,’ but he’s very smart.”
During high school Harrelson dated Robin Rodgers Johnson and he has said in several interviews that he tried out for his first school plays because of her.
“He told me he would always give me credit for becoming an actor,” Rodgers Johnson once told the Dayton Daily News. “He said without my prompting, he wouldn’t be where he is.”
According to a Dayton Daily News article from May 1, 1978, it appears Harrelson was also on the track team.
He spent the summer of 1979 working at Kings Island. After high school, Harrelson attended Hanover College in Indiana, where he studied theater arts and got some stage experience. He graduated from Hanover in 1983.
“Then he went to New York and starved to death for a year,” his mother once told the Dayton Daily News.
Before he got the role on Cheers, he had not been on any other show, except as an extra in one episode of a daytime soap opera.
Harrelson first appeared on Cheers during the fall season premiere in 1985.
