In Memory of . . .

Wiley Hilburn teaches at Louisiana Tech in Ruston. I have excerpted the following tribute from a piece he recently wrote for the Shreveport Times. I think it will speak to the hearts of most folks who grew up in our generation.

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It was appropriate that my eldest son, Greg Hilburn, called from his vacation in Hot Springs, Ark., to give me the message.

"Barney died, Dad," Greg said. He was referring, of course, to the incomparable comedian, Don Knotts, dead last month at 81.

Knotts famously played the insecure, rubber-faced deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" in a five-year, Emmy-winning tenure in the 1960s.

Greg and our family laughed so hard at Barney's antics that we literally fell on the floor, out of breath. Knotts, or Barn, was a member of our family. We couldn't wait for the next episode. If Barney wasn't in it, we were mad.

Completing the circle, my 94-year-old mother and I were watching Barney reruns, including a marathon, only last week. Knotts was still making mother and me laugh. Barney Fife was a member of the Hilburn family, of the human family.

Reruns took Knotts, the ultimate Everyman, into the generations after "The Andy Griffith Show" called it quits. In the 1980s, in front of a smart creative class at Louisiana Tech, I horribly mispronounced a sensitive word. The class held its breath in suspended laughter. Red-faced, I said, "I feel like Barney Fife." The students cracked up. They all knew Barn as well as I did.

We saw the fumbling deputy in ourselves, and then we did that hardest thing -- we laughed at ourselves.

"If only we could see ourselves as others see us," poet Robert Burns wrote. The few people I knew who didn't like Knotts were dumb and blind to who they were. I won't name names, but they were not perceptive people.

There is a lot of Barney in all of us. Deputy Fife made us feel more comfortable with our foibles and faults.

My favorite episode was when Opie's puppy got lost. At first, typically, Barney was a rock. But when a storm rolled in, cracking thunder, Barney lost his bravado.

"He's a trembler," Barney said of the lost puppy. Then Fife said that dogs are a lot better than giraffes. "Giraffes only think about number one," Barney said.

Knotts went on from the Barney character to movies and extended TV career. I don't know why, but Knotts in any other similar role than Barney Fife was chalk on a blackboard to me -- a caricature of the character.

Mayberry, U.S.A. with Barney, Andy, Opie and Aunt Bee took us back to a safer, sweeter time in the rural American South. Mayberry was small town U.S.A. until methamphetamine invaded. But that's only the nostalgic aspect of the show.

A classic is a rare role, book or movie that is relevant to generation after generation. We haven't lost Barney. That's the good thing. We've gained a classic.

Classics never seem irrelevant or dated or even regional. Don Knotts, or Barney Fife, is a classic. And classics don't die.