I guess I encountered Andy Griffith when I was nine or ten years old. I heard his 1953 monologue, “What It Was, Was Football,” and it cracked me up. When, in 1958, Andy Griffith starred in No Time For Sergeants and Onionhead (I more enjoyed the former), I was hooked. Andy’s stint in No Time For Sergeants as Permanent Latrine Orderly (PLO) inspired me when, after a minor injury in Basic training, I held that post while recuperating. (I couldn’t make the toilet seats snap to attention, however.) Beginning in 1960, and for the next eight years or so, I was a regular viewer of The Andy Griffith Show and a regular visitor as well to Mayberry, North Carolina, a small town whose friendliness and general good will were of mythic proportions. Mayberry was the epitome of the ideal of Small Town America. Nothing crude or lewd in any of it, and it’s a shame that today’s sitcoms are lesser in so many ways.
His widow said, “Andy was a person of incredibly strong Christian faith and was prepared for the day he would be called Home to his Lord,”
“He is the love of my life, my constant companion, my partner, and my best friend. I cannot imagine life without Andy, but I take comfort and strength in God’s grace and in the knowledge that Andy is at peace and with God,” she added.”
We’ll miss you, Andy, until we join you in His presence.
