6 ‘pearls of wisdom’ from the late Betty White — and more life lessons in new book by icon’s friend
“While she was best known for bringing laughter to an audience with her double entendres and comedic timing, there is far more about this Golden Girl. She was steady as well as steadfast in her commitment to the way life should be lived. There was no backing-off of what she felt. Her standards and values were the underpinning and foundation of her authenticity.”
— from “Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom” (see more life lessons at the end of this report)
It’s going to be a quiet Christmas Eve for Patty and Tom Sullivan and their children, Blythe and Sully. They’ll get together in the family’s home in Palos Verdes, Calif., to honor and remember their dear adopted family member Betty White, who died on Christmas Eve last year. There’ll be laughter and probably a few tears.
Gram III
White, the dimpled, beloved actress in “The Mary Tyler Moore show,” “The Golden Girls” and “Hot in Cleveland,” was so close to the Sullivan family that she referred to them as “her Sullivans.” To Patty and Tom, White was a treasured mentor and second mom. To their kids, she was “Gram III.”
Patty Sullivan pays loving tribute to her surrogate mom in “Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom: Life Lessons from a Beloved American Treasure” (Forefront Books, $27).
“Betty was the most amazing combination of artist and realist,” Sullivan writes. “To begin to understand what she was able to give to our children as Gram III, it’s helpful to grasp the true scope of this remarkable woman’s intelligence and strength. She had a solid right and left brain. She had a creative side and a business side. She never enrolled in acting classes or workshops. She had a style that was all her own — a natural and as such, she was completely and authentically Betty White.”
White, whose acting career spanned seven decades, spent years sharing with the Sullivans holiday meals, Scrabble games (she was a fierce competitor), and quiet evenings watching the ocean tides at White’s hide-away home in Carmel, Calif.
“In my life, I have had the great privilege of knowing Betty White Ludden for more than 53 years,” Sullivan writes. “In ways neither of us could have known, she was that iridescent lining — the Mothering Stone providing her wisdom, her pearls, helping me to grow.”
Who are the Sullivans?
Who are the Sullivans? Tom, who is blind, is an actor, a singer, an author of 14 books, a motivational speaker and a composer who’s been a guest on late-night Tv shows. Patty has traveled with him for his music concerts and speaking engagements across the country. Among her volunteer commitments, she founded an organization that supports the Blind Children’s Center of Los Angeles.
The 50-year friendship between the Sullivans and White began In the summer of 1968 when bachelor Tom Sullivan was performing at a club in Cape Cod, where White and her husband Allen Ludden — TV personality, actor, singer, game show host — were doing summer stock. Playing matchmaker, Betty and Allen introduced Patty to Tom. (When Ludden died in 1981 after 17 years of marriage, White said she’d never remarry because she’d already had the best.)
Betty White and Tom Sullivan were such good friends that they wrote three books together based on their mutual love of Sullivan’s guide dogs. “The Leading Lady: Dinah’s Story” is about Tom’s first dog, a beautiful golden retriever.
“Dinah was still healthy when she had to retire because she lost the kind of focus an animal needs to guide someone without vision,” Patty Sullivan recalled. “When her job was taken away she got depressed so Betty intervened and took Dinah to live with her. Betty got the idea for her and Tom to do a book about how Dinah became part of her life, and they began writing that story together. They did (publicity) in about 30 cities and this precious story brought us much closer to Betty. Three or four years before Betty died, she didn’t have a pet living with her. Tom had a beautiful German Shepherd, Baron. When we brought him to Betty’s house there were kisses all over his head. She loved feeling his fur.” (Tom and Betty’s other books are “Together: A Story of Shared Vision” and “Alive Day: A Story of Love and Loyalty.”)
Even camels liked Betty
White’s love of animals was limitless. As a board member of Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association and trustee and commissioner of Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, she lent her time and celebrity to furthering animal welfare, including writing several books about her endeavors.
“She offered leadership as well as support,” Sullivan writes of White. “She was adamant that her contributions fund specific programs or specific studies that she had researched, understood the mission and validity of the work, and knew the director. The Sea Otter Rescue Program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is an example. She did not want her money to sit in an account building a healthy bank balance that someone down the road might spend or appropriate in ways she would not have known or researched. She wanted it used for the things she clearly understood and was completely passionate about.”
February 2022: Betty White gets her own snowplow, Betty Whiteout
The Sullivans visited the zoo with White many times, but Patty will never forget the day she saw Betty fall in love with a camel during a photo shoot:
“The crew was setting up (to film) and while all this was going on this camel came trotting up to Betty like they were long-lost friends. The look of love in their eyes was amazing. Camels are mean. They bite and spit. But here’s Betty lovingly patting this camel’s nose through the fence. It was a long-lasting impression for me about communication with any animal on four legs. Betty didn’t know this was her special gift. She thought everybody could do it.”
Pearls of wisdom
“Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom,” Patty Sullivan’s debut book, began seven or eight years ago as entries in her personal journal.
“As time went on I was reflecting a lot on this with Betty and it became more of a reflection and spiritual practice,” she recalls. “In the last three years of Betty’s life COVID kept us from seeing her only a few times. I was encouraged by my husband and friends to put these thoughts in a book. But I was hesitant. I wanted to honor Betty and extend her goodness and yet the stories are so personal. Will anybody care about the time I spent with her? I decided that if I didn’t get a publisher I would close it down and move on. But it was meant to be. Last April we connected with Simon & Schuster and they hurried to get it out in time for the anniversary of Betty’s death.”
Now that sad event is almost here, and Patty admits it’s an emotional time for her family.
“Betty has been gone almost a year, but we’re trying to hold on, not let her go quite yet. Dec. 19 was the last time we saw her. She was home, with caregivers around the clock. She was still very vital, dressed up, with her makeup on, her eyes as gorgeous as always. The doctor only allowed us to stay 20 minutes and we took every precious minute. The closer we got to her birthday the more we felt she was going to make it to 100 years old. She was somewhat determined to do so. She lived every moment with so much dignity and grace, enthusiasm. Most of all, an appreciation for life. To me, that’s Betty’s pearl of wisdom that stands out the most — ‘you’ve got to appreciate every minute.’ ”
“Listen,” Betty said.
If any of White’s show biz friends does a film biography of her life, one of the high points that explains her has to be Patty Sullivan’s memory of a horse-drawn sleigh ride in Winter Park, Colo.
“That year the sky was crystal clear. There was a full moon and so many stars,” Patty recalls. “Betty’s breath was taken away by the experience; getting into a sleigh drawn by horses thrilled her. Going into the forest she was overwhelmed by the beauty as we all were. Betty was a professional observer of life and that night she shared her wisdom with the others in the sleigh.”
This is how Sullivan writes it:
“…Betty stood up, commanding the moment. She asked the wagon drivers to stop the horses…and asked everyone to be quiet. We were all a bit taken aback. Had someone done something that offended her? ‘Listen,’ she said. She was not going to let this opportunity go by without insisting that we pay attention to another dimension. ‘The more quiet you become, the more you can hear. Feel the stillness in the air. Can you hear the silence? Do you hear the sounds of the snow falling? Can you hear the rustling of the trees? Do you hear the horses breathing? Listen to the wilderness.’ ”
That was the authentic Betty White.
“You kids do whatever you want.”
Patty and her husband would ask Betty, off and on over the years if she wanted them to do something after her death, communicate with anyone to speak on her behalf.
“She was very flippant and said, ‘You kids do whatever you want.’ When I think about that response I want to honor her through stories and telling how much she meant to me and my family by putting it in writing. COVID removed her from us for the last three years of her life. As I wrote the last couple chapters of my book, Betty had not died yet but I was already missing her. I knew what a hole she would leave in our lives. I hope people will respond to my book by thinking I was not taking advantage but honoring her legacy, keeping it alive.”
“Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom” is getting love from readers and critics.
“Some chapters and paragraphs wrote themselves as I remembered things,” Patty says. “I am so glad there is an audience appreciating it. As we come to the first anniversary of Betty’s death they can read a story about a woman who was not just a Golden Girl, an actress, but a unique and special being we had the privilege of knowing. I am happy now to share these stories.”
Lessons Patty Sullivan learned from Betty White:
Have a sense of humor.
Don’t say no too often if you want to be invited again.
You might not be current in choice (didn’t get the job), but you need to stay in the game and bring it! Deliver your best, word-perfect.
When you bring your best, you allow others to bring theirs.
Be a good friend to the people who are important to you.
Be generous, It will always come back to you in spades — then, now, and always.
— Based on Sullivan’s book, “Betty White’s Pearls of Wisdom: Life Lessons from a Beloved American Treasure” (Forefront Books, $27).
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