In 2007, a work-related conference took me to Asheville, North Carolina, and during a free evening, I ventured a little further west to Maggie Valley, to a gathering that my cousin Dean had invited me to. 

As I mingled among the folks there, I looked across the way and saw someone I recognized – Harold Beckenholdt. Mr. Beckenholdt, a native Oklahoman, was nearly eighty. He was standing alone, so I went over to converse with him and to ask him about some work he had done in my home county some thirty years prior. My inquiry seemed to please him, and he smiled as he fondly reminisced about those days.

In the midst of our conversation, Mr. Beckenholdt’s wife, Judy, approached, and as she heard us speaking of some of his former co-workers, she informed me one of them was just across the way, and she insisted I wait while she found him and brought him over.

Soon our little group was engaged in a lively and friendly conversation about the folks we knew in common and how much the work these gentlemen had done meant to our community – how it was still remembered and treasured. 

Mr. Beckenholdt had continued working all these many years on a number of projects in a variety of locations. In fact, this get-together was a celebration of sorts for his most recent project – one that he had collaborated on with my cousin and some of the other folks in attendance. 

Within the next decade, both Mr. Beckenholdt and his wife passed away, dying only ten months apart. While Mr. Beckenholdt was never world renowned, he left an impressive body of work spanning more than six decades. What outshone his work, though, was his legacy as a family man and as a father, who deeply loved his two boys, Ronnie and Clint.

And while you probably have no prior familiarity with Harold Beckenholdt, perhaps you will recall him as the wonderful character actor Rance Howard, who had small parts in such big films as Cool Hand Luke, Chinatown, Cocoon, Apollo 13, Ghosts of Mississippi, and A Beautiful Mind as well as dozens of popular TV shows. 

As for his son Ronnie, well, speaking as a proud North Carolinian, he was none other than our very own Sheriff Andy Taylor’s boy Opie.

God bless Mayberry, and God bless the memory of Harold Beckenholdt.