ANDY GRIFFITH His Amazing Untold Story

HARDSHIP, HEARTBREAK AND UNSHAKABLE FAITH SHAPED THE LIFE OF THE BELOVED TV ICON

- LOUISE A. BARILE

Even after he became a huge TV star, Andy Griffith liked to spend his summers in North Carolina without shoes. "He would go into stores barefoot sometimes even without a shirt!" his daughter, Dixie Griffith, tells Closer. "He wasn't a typical Hollywood type."

Growing up in blue-collar Mount Airy, Andy would never have dared dream of a home as beautiful as his 70-acre estate on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks, but returning to his native state every summer still helped him recall his roots. "That's where he felt free," Dixie says. "We would go on boat trips, play volleyball and go waterskiing. He loved to entertain and was pretty much the life of the party."

Entertaining started off as a survival skill that Andy, an only child, learned in his youth. "His father was a foreman in a furniture factory, so his parents could dress Andy well. That worked against him because a lot of the kids from the poor side of Mount Airy were not clean or well dressed, and Andy got bullied a lot as a kid," says Daniel de Visé, author of Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show. Andy hit a major turning point in his life when he discovered that he could deflect bullies' anger by making them laugh.

He took drama at Mount Airy High School and learned to play music - a talent that Andy would hone throughout his life. "He was very, very into music. He had guitars, banjos, horns, and a piano," Dixie reveals. "He could play pretty much any instrument." Andy's album I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns even won a Grammy Award in 1997.

A REMARKABLE RISE