Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father's Journey

Andy Griffith (1926-2012) was one of North Carolina's most beloved exports for decades, capturing America's heart as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Evan Dalton Smith was born in Asheboro, North Carolina a few decades after Andy, just over an hour south of Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy. Both were small-town boys who grew up in similar places, where the counties were dry and the churches plentiful. But for both, there was darkness, crushed hopes, and tragedy, hidden just below the surface.

For Smith and many of his generation in North Carolina, Andy Griffith was like the air--everywhere, all the time, a part of daily life. Even after he left the state, Smith always felt the pull of home and the lingering ghost of Andy alongside it. This is an exploration on celebrity and the self, on home and what that means when you leave it, and why we love and admire the people we do--even if we've never met them--all told through the entwined lives of iconic actor Andy Griffith and writer Evan Dalton Smith. It is through Smith's telling of Griffith's life that he finds his own story, one that is both informed by and freed from the legacy of one of North Carolina's most famous sons.