Alvin Tutweiler

Alvin Tutweiler was a fictional character in the television series "Mama's Family". He was played by Alan Oppenheimer.

Raytown's Pompous Mayor

Tutweiler was the mayor of the fictitious community of Raytown, where Thelma Harper lived for many years. Despite his often pompous ways and tendency to rub his constituents the wrong way, he was a somewhat decent mayor.

He had met Ellen Harper not long after she had divorced her husband, Bruce Jackson, and the two bonded. To the snobbish and very conniving Ellen, she saw him as a step to becoming possibly the first lady of the state. Her claim to this was "it worked for Nancy Reagan!"

As always, trouble began when, during a senior citizen's group meeting at Thelma's house, she challenged the usually unopposed Mayor in his next election. This was a shock to Ellen, who refused to have any part of it, and fought her own family to try and stop it. Obviously her heart was set for Alvin to win, but in the end, despite Ellen's machinations, Thelma defeated him by a shocking landslide.

However, she discovered that campaigning for mayor, and actually running a city are two very different things, and Thelma realized that she couldn't run Raytown, so she resigned and handed the reins of the city back to Alvin, who remained mayor all during the rest of the show's run.

Another time where the mayor made things tough for Thelma was when he was about to demolish the neighborhood she lived in to put in another landfill. Making Raytown distinguished by having two landfills! However, her neighborhood (and her house in particular) was a former house of ill-repute where the founder of Raytown, James A. Ray, had died. It was located at Number One Old Decatur Road, and although the street system had changed, the house that she lived in was purchased back when it was Number One Old Decatur Road, and so the house was saved, to Tutweiler's chagrin, by making it a historical landmark. The neighbors were furious about this because they were hoping for a ton of money, and also to be rid of Thelma as a neighbor.