http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/07/andy-griffith-dies-at-age-86/1
RIP. Seemed to be as nice a guy off screen as he was on.
I'm sure you're right, which is what made his role in Elia Kazan's
A Face in The Crowd such a departure for him. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it. Griffith plays a character whose public image seems pretty close to Andy's own, but his private persona is quite different.
A few years ago Sarah and I visited Mt. Airy, NC, where Andy grew up, and which was purportedly the inspiration for Mayberry. Talk about a town that has reinvented itself around a television show, this is it. Very charming and cute, but if The Andy Griffith Show had never existed I can't imagine what it would be like.
RIP Andy.