Television Father Andy Griffith

Perhaps one of the best loved television fathers of all time was Andy Griffith in his role as Sheriff Andy Taylor in the long running Andy Griffith Show, which ran on network television from 1960 to 1968 and in syndication ever after. No one who loved the show will ever forget the relationship between Andy and his son Opie.

Andy Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina on June 1, 1926. He was an only child and grew up in a family of modest means. He attended school in Mount Airy and came upon his love for music and drama under the tutelage of teachers in his high school.

Andy's family was Baptist and he attended the Grace Moravian Church in North Carolina where he met pastor Ed Mickey who helped him better develop his faith and his music. Mickey was also a community band leader and taught him to sing and play the trombone. Andy considered becoming a minister but switched his major to music at the University of North Carolina.

Andy started acting in high school and was involved in community theater. He also taught drama and music after graduating from the university.

His quick wit and southern drawl endeared him to audiences from the very beginning. He did monologues, worked in the theater and was best known there for his role as Will Stockdale in No Time for Sergeants, where he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1956.

His role as a rural county sheriff actually began on an episode of Make Room for Daddy in 1960, and was so popular that it spun off into the Andy Griffith Show in fictional Mayberry, North Carolina.

From 1960 to 1968, the Andy Griffith Show was a national hit. Sheriff Taylor was a single father raising his son Opie (played by Ron Howard) in a home with his Aunt Bea. Many episodes were filled with his homespun philosophies about life and fatherhood, and series viewers watched little Opie grow up before their eyes under the tutelage of his television father.

After a brief hiatus from television to pursue movie acting roles and after recovering from a bout with Guillain–Barré syndrome which left him with paralysis in both legs, Griffith returned to television as Atlanta attorney Ben Matlock in the Matlock series. The series ran from 1986 to 1992 and has also been in syndication since that time.

In the first season of Matlock, the lead character's daughter Charlene shared his law practice and they showed a close relationship in the program. She was written out of the program at the end of the first season, and another lawyer daughter came into the program at the end of the sixth season, and again the father-daughter relationship blossomed in the series.

Andy Griffith was married to Barbara Bray Edwards in 1949 and were divorced in 1972. They had an adopted son, Andrew Samuel Griffith, Jr. and a daughter Dixie Nan.

He married Greek actress Solica Cassuto in 1973 and they divorced in 1981.

He married Cindi Knight in 1983.

Andy Griffith died on July 3, 2012 at his home in North Carolina. Almost immediately upon his death, commentators in the media talked about his example as a father in the Andy Griffith show.

"Well, if ever television offered American dads a reason to emulate a sitcom character, this was the show. Andy taught Opie by example, with life lessons about honesty, compassion, respect. And when he screwed up, as fathers are wont to do, he admitted his mistake. Mayberry was a town of hilarious eccentrics, yet no laugh ever overshadowed the moral compass that guided the show -- the love between father and son." - Allan Walton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"It was the quintessential American ideal of fatherhood, a Norman Rockwell painting set in motion. By some accounts, Griffith kept his character conspicuously single to let the show focus more on the father-son dynamic, a part of family life that he thought America was already starting to appreciate less. He gave us a father figure who was firm yet merciful, tender but manly, not quite perfect but never bumbling. He was the kind of father every boy wanted and every man hoped to be." - Michael Overall, Tulsa World

"But for teachin’ a young ’un about life and death and right and wrong, how could anyone be better than Andy Taylor? As we watched Opie turn from a child into, well, Ron Howard, it was Andy’s steadfast, honest, devotion that taught us as many lessons as it did his play-acting son.... For a couple generations, Taylor’s portrayal of the Southern sheriff in Mayberry was the gold standard for parenting. His was also the bar we adults tried to reach as people." - Editorial, The Log Cabin Democrat