Everyone knew who Ernest was back in the late 80s and well into the 90s; played by veteran actor Jim Varney, the dim-witted, accident-prone character starred in local commercials along the Gulf ...

"Billy just had this way about him and you obviously noticed him automatically no matter where he was at," Bill Byrge's cousin Sharon Chapman tells PEOPLE ...

While he worked at a library in Nashville, he played Bobby in four of those films and on a Saturday morning kids show.

Character actor Bill Byrge, best known for appearing alongside Jim Varney in the Ernest films, has passed away. According Byrge's cousin, Sharon Chapman (via Facebook), Byrge died on Thursday, Jan. 9.

He was the ‘Bobby’ character in several ‘Ernest’ movies with Jim Varney. I always teased him ... In 1986, he starred in a series of commercials with Gailard Sartain for a Nashville ...