Indy 500's Stalwart Singer Jim Nabors Comes Out: "You Just Have to Get Above It"
Though he has been whispering it to confidants for decades, the news emerged in mass media just today: The artist formerly known as Gomer Pyle is gay. A stalwart of Indianapolis 500 festivities, Jim Nabors has sung “Back Home Again in Indiana” 33 times at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s running of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” since 1972. In 2012, the Andy Griffith Show alum was unable to attend the Indy 500 race due to heart-valve replacement surgery in Hawaii, where he resides. It turns out that Hawaii is also where he met his longtime partner Stan Cadwallader. The two men met in 1975; Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter, and they took up immediately, but just recently wed in Washington state on Jan. 15. (Same-sex marriage became legal there in December 2012.)