In the 1970s, a group of gay men in Southern California sent out invitations to a party that claimed that visitors would witness the wedding of Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson. Hudson, they said, would take the last name of Nabors’ most famous character and become Rock Pyle. This is obviously a joke. But it got out without that last bit and was taken seriously in certain circles. The two men, who had been friends but nothing more, never saw each other in public again out of concern over their careers.

Jim Nabors didn’t quite have Rock Hudson’s career. But he still had a long-running career. It started with singing in high school and in his church. He moved to New York, where he worked as a typist for the UN. Then he moved to Chattanooga and got a job as film cutter for the local NBC affiliate, where he also filled in on one of the shows when people didn’t show up. He then moved to LA, where he continued working as a film cutter but also had a nightclub act. Eventually, his act was seen by Andy Griffith, who decided he had talent.

From then on, he was basically Gomer Pyle. No matter what else he did, no matter what else he was in, he was Gomer Pyle. Carol Burnett considered Nabors her good luck charm and had him as the guest on the first episode of every season. He did The Muppet Show. He did a couple of Burt Reynolds movies . . . as characters that were basically Gomer Pyle. He tried any number of other things, and basically he was just seen by the public as Gomer Pyle.

Apparently, in later years, he had a hard time watching Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. I’ve never seen it, not liking Gomer Pyle much as a character, but the introduction of the show features Pyle with real Marines. Many of whom died in Vietnam. Nabors was made an honorary Marine; at his death, the Corps actually released a statement. In general, people seemed to have liked Jim Nabors, which is something you can’t say about everyone. He seems to have been a really nice guy.

In 2012, Washington State legalized gay marriage by statute, a decision later upheld by voters like me. In early 2013, Nabors and Stan Cadwallader, his partner of almost forty years, traveled to the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, a fine old historical landmark not far from the Seattle waterfront—near, in fact, where Artdork and I had dinner together a little over a year ago. There, they were married. At long last.

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