LOS ANGELES, CA – Greek-American actress Betty White celebrated her 95th birthday on January 17. The only child of Christine Tess Cachikis and Horace Logan White, she was born in Oak Park, IL.
The family moved to California during the Great Depression and it was while attending high school that Betty decided to become an actress. A pioneer in the television industry, White worked in front of and behind the cameras as the first woman to produce her own TV sitcom. She won 7 Emmy Awards during her long TV career most memorably for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Sue Ann Nevins and for The Golden Girls as Rose Nylund. Among her other honors are 3 Screen Actors Guild awards, 3 American Comedy awards, a Grammy, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. White was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995. As of 2013, she also holds the Guinness World Records for the longest television career for a female entertainer. White is also a longtime animal rights activist.
On Dec. 27, a GoFundMe campaign was launched by Demetrios Hrysikos from South Carolina to protect the iconic actress from 2016, a year that saw the departure of so many beloved celebrities. The description of the fundraising effort read, “Help 2016 catch these hands if it goes anywhere near Betty White! If she’s okay with it I will fly to wherever Betty White is and keep her safe till Jan. 1, 2017. Now, assuming she doesn’t want a strange Greek standing guard outside her door, all monies will be donated to the Spartanburg Little Theater to help craft new stars of stage and screen to carry mantle of the legends that have left is this year.”
The campaign raised over $9,000 just shy of the $10,000 goal. In an update on the GoFundMe page, Hrysikos said he would soon present a check to the head of the Spartanburg Little Theater, minus the fees charged on the site.
In honor of Betty White’s 95th birthday, here are some wonderful quotes she has shared over the years, as reported in People magazine.
From her 2010 opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, White said, “I didn’t know what Facebook was and now that I do know what it is, it sounds like a huge waste of time … at my age if I want to connect with old friends, I need a Ouija board…In my day, seeing pictures of people’s vacations was considered a punishment.”
From an interview in the New York Times, she said, “I’m a health nut. My favorite food is hot dogs with French fries. And my exercise: I have a two-story house and a very bad memory, so I’m up and down those stairs.”
In her book If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t) published in 2011, she wrote, “You can lie to anyone in the world and even get away with it, perhaps, but when you are alone and look into your own eyes in the mirror, you can’t sidestep the truth. Always be sure you can meet those eyes directly.”
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