![]() ![]() He could be humble at times but usually had to be the center of attention. He demanded loyalty but was rarely cynical and often optimistic, retaining a wide-eyed, curious wonder about the world-and was sometimes, even into his last years, naïve. He was, by turns, good, generous, ornery and thrifty, and he often quietly helped underdogs like he had been. He loved the gentle, slow-boat pace of the island, where he could pop in at a friend’s house and he and his buddy would break out their guitars and tall-boy Budweisers, porch-strumming and talking for hours. He was a crack skeet shot and a hard drinker, and he was religious in his own way. They wanted to set it right, to convey the true nature of this man who was a tangle of contradictions, separating the myth from the reality, as hard as that might be. Andy’s island friends were finally ready to talk.Īn aerial shot of Andy’s original island house. My sources began pulling out their scrapbooks, volunteering fascinating stories about Andy. But by the summer of 2018, as I worked on another book concerning his island, I sensed something was changing. His closest friends on the island, who knew him best, joined him in the effort, mostly maintaining their silence after his death there on July 3, 2012. But he was never clear about who he really was, carefully keeping up his guard. In thousands of interviews, he sprinkled clues about his true self, sometimes speaking candidly about his artistic struggles and self-doubt. We know him as the iconic Sheriff Andy Taylor of his namesake show.Īndy often said he was not Taylor, nowhere near as good as him, although there were parts of him in that character that, tellingly, bears his first name. What was he really like? This year, 2022, the tenth anniversary of his death, that’s the question his fans nationwide continue to ask. ![]() He’d sip drinks at night high above the lights twinkling on in thousands of heartland homes across the nation where lived his fan legion, first watching his namesake show on prime time on TV sets with rabbit-ear antennas, then in daily reruns on flat screens.įor the last leg of the trip, once he made it big, he’d catch a puddle-jumping small plane to his island, the sight of shimmering water and sand beaches fringed by pines always making his heart sing, the place that eventually became his full-time home.Īs my friends told their stories and we rolled across the dream-drifting sound where Andy spent many of his happiest hours, the island’s barefoot legend was coming alive. During his six-decade career, he caught countless red-eye flights east from Los Angeles, headed home from the city where he made his living to the island that gave him that living. His memories of working in that play were the anchor to which he kept returning. It’s just south of the Waterside Theatre, the home of The Lost Colony outdoor drama, where it all began for Andy in the summer of 1947.Īndy, “Doc” Harvey, and their sons at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard Station in October 1968. We cruised by Andy’s last big house peeking through the pines. My friend at the wheel pulled out from his downtown Manteo dock and piloted the boat out of Shallowbag Bay, then cruised slowly north on the sound, rocking gently by a sandspit where Andy sometimes parked his buddy-laden pontoon boat (he hated to be alone, my friends told me) and fiercely competed in volleyball. They told me about enjoying drinks with him on Roanoke Sound, and we shared drinks as they wove stories about Andy. Island friends were taking me out on their wooden sportfishing boat, a 30-footer with clean lines, a vessel they took Andy Griffith out on when he grew too frosty-haired frail to take out his own boat. It was dusk, a gray-dog day surrendering to a cool sunset in August 2020. Excerpted from the book Andy Griffith’s Manteo: His Real Mayberry, which was published in May.
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