PRPG:

RIP, Andy Griffith

July 3, 2012

It’s like we all lost a good uncle:

Actor Andy Griffith, who played folksy Sheriff Andy Taylor in the fictional town of Mayberry, died Tuesday at the age of 86, his family said.

Griffith died at about 7 a.m. at his home on Roanoke Island, according to Dare County, North Carolina, Sheriff J.D. “Doug” Doughtie.

He passed away after an unspecified illness and “has been laid to rest on his beloved Roanoake Island,” the family said in a statement.

“Andy was a person of incredibly strong Christian faith and was prepared for the day he would be called Home to his Lord,” his wife, Cindi Griffith, said in the statement issued through the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Best known for his role on “The Andy Griffith Show,” the University of North Carolina music graduate also starred as a murder-solving Southern attorney in the television series “Matlock” during the 1980s and 1990s. He was also known for his roles in movies and on the stage, as a producer and as a Grammy Award-winning gospel singer.

RIP, Andy Griffith.

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