Andy Griffith (June 1, 1926 -- July 3, 2012

Once upon a time, Andy Griffith portrayed wise affable Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina.  Mayberry was an idealized version of small-town life in America where problems almost always had solutions involving kindness, patience, charity, wisdom and common sense.  Mayberry was no more an accurate portrayal of mid-20th century America than Keeping Up With The Kardashians is an accurate representation of 21st Century America.  But Mayberry, and Griffith's Sheriff Taylor, were aspirational:  this is what life was supposed to be like; this is the way people are supposed to behave.

It has been said that there's nothing you need to know about living a good life that you can't learn by watching Sheriff Taylor's life in Mayberry.  That may not literally be true, but it's close enough for us.