Report: Jim Nabors to Return to Indy 500 in 2013
On Tuesday evening, WTHR.com reported that Jim Nabors will make the trip to Indianapolis this month.
The singer, whose performances of “Back Home Again in Indiana” have become a cherished Indianapolis 500 tradition, missed last year’s race due to health concerns. As consolation, he taped a rendition of the song from his home in Hawaii, which was played on monitors at Indianapolis Motor Speedway before the 2012 race.
The past year has been an eventful one for the former star of the Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, USMC. After having heart-valve surgery last spring, he came out of the closet in early 2013.
As of this morning, IMS still had not officially announced Nabors’s return, and the WTHR post doesn’t identify a source for the news. WTHR assignment editor Kyle Thomas told May Madness that the report came from sports director Dave Calabro, who moonlights at the Speedway as a PA announcer.
