American actor, a handsome man and well-built, he fit the “beefcake” image well. Born of Norwegian parents, his father, a chef, left when Jon-Erik was four. He and his older brother, Gunnar, were raised by their mother, Gretha, who supported the family by working as a secretary by day and a waitress by night. His mother managed to buy Jon-Erik a piano and to take him to Broadway musicals, where she would wait for him nearby at a coffee shop since there was only enough money for one ticket. Schoolmates recall that in high school he was “straight,” wearing white socks and black shoes until his junior year.
By his senior year Jon-Erik was president of the senior class, master of ceremonies at the Holiday Show, and the first boy in the school’s history to become a cheerleader. He acted in school plays and started the school radio station. At Michigan State he majored in social science and worked as a deejay known as “Yukon Jack” at local radio stations. In his junior year, he was on the Spartans football team and he began to work out with weights. He also renewed his interest in acting.
Immediately following graduation he was in New York devouring the trade papers, cultivating casting directors and sending out 300 photos and resumes a week. He took a battery of acting lessons and auditioned for Broadway. Until a chance meeting while cleaning the apartment of John Travolta’s manager, Bob Le Mond, he worked odd jobs to make ends meet.
Le Mond urged Hexum to move to California, which he did in September 1981. Four months later he won the starring role in NBC’s “Voyagers!” His next role was “The Making of a Male Model” opposite Joan Collins in 1983.
On 10/12/1984, having just completed the seventh episode of a new series for CBS entitled “Cover Up,” Hexum jokingly picked up the .44 Magnum prop filled with blanks, raised the gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger. The blast from the blank charge from the most powerful handgun commercially available drove a skull fragment the size of a quarter into the center of his brain, causing massive hemorrhaging. He was rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center where doctors worked on him for five hours. Six days later, on October 18th, he was still in a coma when his mother authorized his removal from life support and his organs harvested for donation to others. His death certificate gives October 18, 1984.
Link to Wikipedia biography