America's most loved Sheriff, Andy Griffith dies at 86

 By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY

Say the name Andy Griffith, and you've said something about America.

Griffith, who, as Sheriff Andy Taylor on the actor's namesake 1960s TV comedy, kept the peace, and represented a heartland ideal, died Tuesday, the actor's friend Bill Friday told WITN News. He was 86.

Beloved actor Andy Griffith died this morning.

Former UNC President Bill Friday says The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock actor died at his home in Dare County, 

North Carolina around 7 a.m.

Friday, who is a close friend of the actor, confirmed the news to WITN News.

Emergency medical crews responded to Griffith's home this morning, Dare County Sheriff J.D. Doughtie told WAVY.com.

Griffith, who was born in Mt. Airy, N.C., was launched to fame as Sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show for the CBS from 1960-1968. On the show, Ron Howard played his son, Opie. He starred on other shows and in films, but found his greatest success again with legal drama Matlock, from 1986 to 1995. He played the title character, Ben Matlock.

In 2000, Griffith underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery and in 2007 had hip surgery after a fall.

Andy Griffith, Don Knotts and Ronny Howard in 'The Andy Griffith Show.'

In addition to The Andy Griffith Show, Griffith created a darkly iconic character in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd and won fans in the long-running whodunit series Matlock. But, in the end, it was Mayberry that put him on the map.

From 1960 to 1968, Griffith's kindly sheriff raised a son, Opie, played by Ron Howard, and a high-strung deputy, Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts. That Taylor, a white lawman in the Civil Rights-era South, became a model of fairness was a tribute to the series. And to Griffith.

"We—everyone one on the show—have a real sense of community, of kindness, toward one another," Griffith told The New York Times in 1965. "The basic rule by which we live comes through...the kindness comes through."

Born June 1, 1926, in no place else but North Carolina, Griffith tapped his country roots for laughs in a popular 1950s comedy monolog which begat TV appearances, which begat Broadway and film work, via the Army comedy No Time for Sergeants.

Griffith traded on his aw-shucks persona as two-faced populist Lonesome Roads in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd. Now considered a classic, the film "didn't make a dime" back in the day, its star once recalled.

"I'd struck out on Broadway, and I'd struck out in the movies, so I kinda had to go to television," Griffith said in 2008.

From the start, The Andy Griffith Show, with its classic, catchy whistling theme, was an audience and critical favorite. Griffith, however, never won an Emmy for the series, nor was he ever nominated for it. Knotts, who won five straight Emmys as the fumbling Fife, would say people thought, mistakenly, that Griffith wasn't acting, that he was just acting natural. Griffith would return the compliment, saying the show owed its early success to Knotts, who died in 2006.

The Andy Griffith Show went out on top. Griffith himself pulled the plug: Knotts, after all, had left the show for the movies a couple years earlier, and he wanted to try film, too.

But the film thing didn't work out for Griffith. And when he returned to TV, that didn't work out, either, as he starred in one failed series after another after another. A crippling bout with the viral Guillan-Barre syndrome, in the early 1980s, was yet another blow.

"I thought I was hot stuff, and I'd be able to anything I wanted," Griffith recalled in 1986. "I couldn't."   

Then Griffith went back home. To Mayberry.

The 1986 TV-movie Return to Mayberry, reuniting survivors of Andy Griffith's original cast, was a hit. That fall, Matlock premiered. The rejuvenated Griffith went on to play the Southern defense attorney for more than a decade.

Among latter-day roles, Griffith rated Oscar buzz for playing the sage, if exacting diner owner in 2007's Waitress.

In 2005, on the occasion of the actor receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, then-President George W. Bush neatly defined the man and where he stood in the collective American consciousness: "TV shows come and go, but there's only one Andy Griffith."

Griffith and his first wife, Barbara Bray Edwards, married in 1949. They were divorced in 1972 and she got custody of their daughter Dixie and he got custody of son Sam, who died in 1996 after years of alcoholism. His second marriage, to Greek actress Solica Cassuto, lasted eight years, from 1973 to 1981.

He and Cindi Knight were married on April 12, 1983, when she was 27 and he was 56. A private man, he told the Virginian-Pilot in 2008 in a lengthy profile by Mal Vincent that he's friendly and outgoing to a point, but has been known to turn down requests for autographs. "When my wife, Cindi, and I go somewhere and we don't want to be recognized. She says, 'Don't talk.' "

Some of the Twitter reaction pouring in:

Ron Howard: "Andy Griffith His pursuit of excellence and the joy he took in creating served generations & shaped my life I'm forever grateful RIP Andy"

Rodney Atkins: "Rest In Peace Andy Griffith. Praying for his family, friends and fans."

SouthernLiving: "Rest in peace Andy Griffith. Mayberry will always have a special place in our hearts."

Lady Antebellum's Hillary Scott: "Heaven gained a talented man today. Mr. Andy Griffith, thanks for giving me amazing memories with my family growing up watching your show!"

Amy Grant: "From Team Amy - Go Rest High on that Mountain, Andy Griffith."

Dave Coulier: "RIP Andy Griffith. Thank you for all the laughs. I love Mayberry, and never knew that R.F.D. was for 

Rural Free Delivery. #AndyGriffith"