Remembering Michael Zaslow as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Sweeps the Nation

Michael Zaslow
Photo Credit: Jessica Burstein/NBC/NBCU

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've undoubtedly seen The Ice Bucket Challenge, the latest viral meme, splash across social media pages. It's all over TV news, newspapers and magazines.

Everyone from your next door neighbor to Oprah Winfrey is being showered with cold water and ice in an effort to raise awareness about ALS - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or as it's also known, Lou Gehrig's disease).

It's also raising money -- as of today, over $40 million has been raised. (The ALS Association usually raises less than a tenth of that in an entire year.)

I'm really glad that ALS is getting some well-deserved attention and awareness. But for many of us soap fans, the person who shone a spotlight on ALS, and its horrible impacts, was the late Michael Zaslow.

For those that may not know him or his work, Zaslow was a New York based actor, and for many of us, he was Roger Thorpe, Guiding Light's most memorable villain, a man both dastardly and dashing. Roger was a passionate fighter, but his tormented relationship with ex-wife Holly, a woman he'd raped while they were married, was as much a battle of intellect as it was of heart.