Author who grew up in Tucson remembers friend Betty White

Nick Thomas Tinseltown Talks This New Year’s Eve will be especially subdued and reflective for author Patty Sullivan and her husband, Tom. Dec. 31 is the anniversary of the passing of one of their closest friends for over half a century, beloved actress Betty White, who died last year just days before her 100th birthday.

In addition to illustrating White’s positive influence on Sullivan’s family, the author’s touching stories offer insight into one of Hollywood’s most endearing and enduring entertainers. For example, almost every post-2011 photograph of Betty White shows the actress sporting a Tiffany diamond-clustered heart-shaped necklace gifted to her by Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hewitt co-starred with White in the 2011 TV movie “The Lost Valentine” and was also an executive producer.

“I must have had a good home economics teacher at school because that’s what I studied in college and wanted to teach it,” Sullivan said. “But I never graduated. In 1968, my junior year, a sorority sister and I spent the summer at Cape Cod where I first saw Tom Sullivan singing. Once I met Tom, he became my life and we married the following year.”

Patty and Tom – blind from birth and who would go on the become a noted actor, singer, and author – met Betty during that Cape Cod trip. The chance meeting resulted in a lifelong friendship between the two families with White later quaintly christening herself ‘Gram III’ – third grandmother to the Sullivans’ two children.

To most people, however, White will always be remembered as the comedic Jekyll and Hyde-ish character Sue Ann Nivens from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the '70s or innocent scatterbrained Rose Nylund a decade later in “The Golden Girls.” “She did have a wicked sense of humor and loved playing against type sometimes,” said Sullivan. “I remember vividly an episode of ‘Boston Legal’ where she played a secretary who kills a guy with a frying pan. I think she acted the hell out of those roles.”

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