Jim Nabors, TV's Gomer Pyle, Dead At 87

"Gomer was a recognizable kind of American hero: a good-hearted, gentle, unsophisticated sort (not unlike Forrest Gump of a later era) who encounters a harder, more cynical modern world - in this case embodied by Southern California - and helps redeem it. ... To fans who knew him only as Gomer, his full-throated, almost operatic baritone was surprisingly striking, if strangely incongruous."