Grandma, barely able to speak, finally returns home after being in the hospital for over a year. Grandpa is thrilled but thinks there is something wrong with his "old woman." A boy gives Elizabeth a piglet for her 4-H project, but it keeps running away.

Note: This is the last appearance of Grandpa Walton due to the death of actor Will Geer. The producers chose to write Grandpa's passing into the season 7 opening episode rather than recast the character.

John-Boy proposes to Daisy and she says yes. Daisy reconnects with her mother and learns some surprising news. Elizabeth and her friend George open a lemonade stand. Grandpa finds a way to increase sales.

John-Boy returns to Walton's Mountain on assignment to write a news story after receiving a letter from Olivia saying that hard times have hit Jefferson County and jobs are scarce. He talks Mr. Guthrie into reopening the Guthrie coal mine to create more jobs; his family will begin by doing carpentry to shore up the mine shaft. But when John, Jason, Ben, Jim-Bob, Harley, and Ike are trapped in a cave-in, John-Boy seems to be the one to blame. John makes a decision about working at a defense plant.

Due to Jim Bob and Ben's negligence, Elizabeth has a bad accident, tumbling off a stack of loose logs she has climbed on to reach a bird's nest. The family must help keep Elizabeth's determination high when the doctor is unsure whether she will walk again. Erin minds the house while Olivia stays with Elizabeth. After a hospital stay, she is sent home wearing leg braces.

Looking to learn more about her family's history, Verdie asks Jason for help. However, through the course of their investigation, they learn some painful truths about her grandfather and how he was born into slavery. Meanwhile, Elizabeth becomes a pen pal with a soldier from a nearby base.

John and Olivia are getting ready to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and they're trying their best to surprise one another on the big day. Meanwhile, as the younger children wonder what to get their parents as a gift, Mary Ellen finds herself trying to stave off temptation when she goes back to work, only to discover her old fiancé is working at the same hospital as her.

In spring of 1940, Jason practices his music for a town festival. He finds Josh, Verdie's son, plays the horn. They practice together. The festival organizers do not want Josh. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Aimee Godsey compete for the same boy.

Ben and Jim-Bob get on each other's nerves. They end up dating each other's girlfriends. Meanwhile, Mamie Baldwin sees a rose bush dying and thinks it means she will die. Grandpa finds a way to help her feel young again.

Flossie Brimmer's brother-in-law Willie and his family relocate from Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Walton's Mountain. A neighbor circulates a rumor that they are German spies, especially after they show interest in Jim Bob's short wave radio. John defends the innocent man and hires him at his mill. The neighbors are finally convinced of the family's innocence after a suspicious package the family receives at Ike's post office turns out to be only medicine.

The Waltons are excited to learn that John will own the mill after two more payments and be completely clear of debt. However, Ike has a financial emergency when he cannot sell a large supply of refrigerators, so John agrees to lend Ike the money so his store will not be foreclosed. The ladies conspire to find a match for Reverend Buchanan; he shocks them by dating Marcia Woolery.

As Christmas approaches, two British children escape the London Blitz to find safety in Walton's Mountain with the Baldwins and the Waltons for Christmas. Meanwhile, Jason contemplates whether he can fight in the impending war, and Olivia has a faith crisis as she can't understand how God could allow war. Mary Ellen and the baby leave to be near Curt; Verdie bakes and sells cakes to raise money for the needy overseas.

Not understanding why she suddenly feels emotionally fragile, Olivia turns to her Aunt Kate for advice. Jim-Bob wants to get a job but needs both parents to sign a permission slip.

Jim-Bob becomes friends with a boy who says he's joining the Air Corps, but it turns out he ran away from an orphanage to retrieve his young sister who was placed in a different facility. Meanwhile, Elizabeth misses Grandma, and thus builds a grandmotherly relationship with Maude Gormley.

U.S. soldiers begin staging war games at Drucilla's Pond, killing fish and scaring the Waltons' cow into giving birth. Olivia enters her scenic paintings in a local art show, after which Grandpa secretly buys them back to keep. Corabeth teaches a tap dance routine to Elizabeth and Aimee. They put on a show.

Curt is called to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and Walton's Mountain receives its first war casualty when G.W. is killed in a training exercise. Yancy hastily marries Sissy and then goes to enlist in the service, but is not accepted. Sissy tries to decorate and adapt to Yancy's rustic home and his animals.

Mary Ellen gives birth to the Waltons' first grandchild, John Curtis Willard. However, Cassie, a lonely and superstitious teenage neighbor whose premature baby girl was stillborn, believes John Curtis was sent to replace her own baby and she kidnaps him. It is up to Olivia to gently explain to Cassie that someday Cassie will have another baby, but that John Curtis is really Mary Ellen's. Meanwhile, a fire at the Dew Drop Inn leaves Jason jobless.

When Erin declines G.W. Haines's marriage proposal, he decides to join the U.S. Army. The Walton parents reluctantly let Erin visit G.W. at his Army camp, where he makes unwanted advances to her. Maude Gormley sells her first painting at Ike's store and offers more paintings for sale through an art dealer.

The Waltons have an encounter with a strange English girl while on a small vacation at the Baldwin sister's beach cottage. Ben stays home alone expecting to live the life of a carefree bachelor.

An elderly Indian and his grandson come to Walton's Mountain saying there are sacred burial grounds where the barn is built.

Ben leaves home to work at a Norfolk defense factory. Tensions run high between Grandpa and John as they take on a big furniture contract without him. Meanwhile, Jason makes friends with a reclusive woman and leads her out of depression back into the world.

Strange footprints and a stringer of catfish lead the Waltons to find 12-year-old Josh, a runaway, in the barn hiding. He attaches himself to John immediately.

Grandpa and Jim Bob try to trap a hawk who's been terrorizing the Waltons' chickens; while Erin and Corabeth are attracted to the community's new preacher, causing gossip.