Don Knotts Had Jokes On His Death Bed
His daughter, Karen, could not stop herself from laughing when Don Knotts cracked a joke while in bed during his final days. “Here’s the thing about my dad. He had this funniness that was just completely, insanely natural. When he was dying, he was making us laugh in hysterics,” she said. Karen said she later regretted going out of the room to laugh (she did this at the time to be polite) because she realized that he would have preferred to hear or see his joke land as a true comedian. He became a comedian since he wanted to laugh through the pain that his difficult childhood caused, so it would be normal for Don Knotts to want to share a laugh even while he faced the tragedy of his death.
His Passing
At the age of 81, Don Knotts died from complications of pneumonia from lung cancer on February 24, 2006 in California’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He had undergone treatment at the medical center months before he died but decided to go home after he reportedly felt better. In 2011, his family replaced the headstone on his grave with a bronze plaque, which displays some of his most popular characters.