I read that Don Knotts, who played the bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on the TV Show “The Andy Griffith Show”, which aired the year of my birth (1960) to 1968 died yesterday. He was also in the very strange film ‘The Incredible Mr. Limpet” of 1964, as well as more than 25 others, including one of my favourites, Pleasantville, in 1998. In that year, Mr. Knotts, who is probably the only famous person born in my hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, was honored when they named a street there after him. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, which was the reason I was born in there too, since my parents were on the faculty at that institution. He was due to make another appearance in Morgantown in August of last year but had to cancel because of ill health.
Mr. Knotts was 81.