Michael Landon has been gone for 35 years, but something he created on the set of Little House on the Prairie never disappeared.

It wasn’t simply the television show.

It was the family around it.

Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, recently opened up about how members of the original Little House cast are still trying to carry forward something Landon believed deeply in: staying connected to each other and to the people who loved the show.

According to Butler and Alison Arngrim, who played the unforgettable Nellie Oleson, Landon understood something about television audiences that wasn’t always obvious in Hollywood.

He respected them.

Arngrim remembered that even at the height of Little House, fans would sometimes recognize Landon from his earlier days as Little Joe on Bonanza.

Instead of brushing them aside because he had moved on to another show, Landon would engage with them, joke with them and acknowledge the affection they still had for him.

That attitude stayed with his cast.

Today, Butler credits Arngrim with helping keep members of the Little House family connected.

Together, they have also worked on events that allow the original stars to meet the generations of viewers who still remember Walnut Grove.

And they’re doing it again.

In September, numerous original cast members are scheduled to gather in Nashville for a three-day Little House on the Prairie reunion.

Arngrim and Butler will be joined by familiar faces including Rachel and Sidney Greenbush, Charlotte Stewart, Patrick Labyorteaux and others.

For Butler, these gatherings aren’t simply opportunities to sign autographs and take photographs.

They’re part of continuing what Landon started.

Landon wasn’t merely Charles “Pa” Ingalls.

He was one of the driving forces behind Little House, serving as star, producer, writer and director and shaping much of the emotional character of the series.

He died in 1991 at only 54.

But decades earlier, Landon apparently understood something remarkable about the program he was making.

People were going to keep watching it.

He was right.

More than 50 years after Little House on the Prairie first arrived on television, people who weren’t even born when the original episodes aired are discovering the Ingalls family.

Meanwhile, the actors who were there are still gathering together.

Still telling the stories.

Still meeting the fans.

And still trying to honor the man who helped turn a television cast into something that, all these years later, still feels remarkably like a family.