By Madison Ely, The Daily Athenaeum
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Don Knotts’s legacy continues as the City of Morgantown installs new Fife Avenue street signs as part of the Don Knotts 100th birthday celebration.
The sign depicts Knotts as Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show,” one of his most recognizable roles from his acting career. The sign also reads the words “Honoring 10 Years of Don Knotts’ legacy, July 21, 1924-July 21, 2024.”
Vincent Kitch, City of Morgantown Director of Arts and Cultural Development, said the Cultural Arts Commission wanted to commemorate Knotts’s birthday with several events, including the Fife Avenue sign.
“When we were in our planning stages, one of the things that came up in the biographies and the research is that Don Knotts, we think, had based his most famous television character, Barney Fife, off of Fife Avenue, which was a street in his hometown when he was a child,” Kitch said.
The City of Morgantown announced the new sign on July 16 in a Facebook post ahead of the Don Knotts Festival. The festival was from July 20-24 at the Metropolitan Theatre and showed some of Knotts’s well-known works and performances from members of the actor’s family.
