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Frances Bavier's final moments: The special arrangements provided by Chatham County Hospital
"She wants to put it behind her."
How much adulation is too much? We've all got that one figure in life, whether it's a sports star or an actor or maybe an author, that we'd love to heap praise on. These people have made a big difference in our lives. They may have inspired us or made us stand up and cheer. Maybe they got us through a particularly hard period.
Regardless of why, there's somebody in everybody's life they haven't met but feel they owe something. Sometimes it's called a "parasocial relationship," and other times it's just called fandom. We want to get close enough to better understand their life, or perhaps just give them a handshake.
For many TV viewers, the cast of The Andy Griffith Show reached near-mythic levels. Griffith himself was a larger-than-life paragon of forthrightness and justice. Don Knotts was the top of the comedy mountain, and nobody could hope to make us laugh that hard ever again. But what of Frances Bavier? While she never had a big movie career, and she didn't show up in the Griffith Show reunion, Bavier still meant a lot to many. She was our aunt, not just Andy's. She defined maternalism for decades, showing us what it meant to care for our families with (albeit stern) warmth.
Watch The Andy Griffith Show on MeTV!
Weeknights at 8 & 8:30, Sundays at 12 & 6 PM
*available in most MeTV marketsSo, when Bavier grew sick towards the end of her life, it was a monumental moment for many Andy Griffith Show fans. By then, fans had welcomed Aunt Bee into their living rooms for four decades. Plenty of us spent more time with Bee than we did with our own kin. It's understandable, then, why the hospital where Bavier was interned made special arrangements for her.
In a 1989 report in The Charlotte Observer, very few details about her illness were revealed. However, the Chatham County Hospital in Siler City spoke with reporters about why.
"We have a personal agreement going back since I've been here that we wouldn't reveal her condition. She is a private person and wants her privacy respected."
That didn't stop fans and radio stations calling the hospital around the clock to check on their Aunt Bee. The phones in the hospital rang off the hook for days on end.
"She wants to be Frances Bavier, citizen, not Aunt Bee," Harrell said. "That was a part of her life that she enjoyed, but she wants to put it behind her."
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10 Comments
to see Malloy and Reed(or Joe Friday and Bill Gannon). The desks Sgts. were instructed to
say - "They're on vacation but I'll tell them you asked for them."
I'm always surprised that so many women considered Reed/Malloy hunks, etc.
They just seem like regular guys to me. I can see why you'd go ga ga over
Tom Selleck or Paul Newman.
Is it because Milner and McCord are from Indiana?
to deal with the tools of war, that's not the audience they are aiming for, its all
lighthearted.
Host Lisa is not going to handle a Ferguson Rifle from the Revolution or take a
Sherman out for a spin. You got the wrong network.
30 or 40% of the entire country and Canada tuning in, since there was only 3 networks.
Francis must have got hit with "Aunt Bee" multiple times a day.
At her church or wherever, how did she know if potential new friends liked Francis their neighbor or just wanted to get near the star/Aunt Bee, to use her in some way.
No wonder she preferred to spend a lot of time with her cats.