‘Betty White Day’ will come to Oak Park, Ill., hometown of TV icon
A birthday celebration fit for a queen has pivoted to a memorial for the last of America’s treasured “Golden Girls.”
On what would’ve been her 100th birthday, Betty White’s hometown is set to pay a fitting tribute to the late television icon. The star, who died Dec. 31, just three weeks shy of her Jan. 17 centennial, will have a day named after her in Oak Park, Ill.
“Betty White, as a true optimist, made the choice every day to be happy,” Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman told the Daily News. “Embracing the memory of her amazing life and taking the time to honor her feels like a symbol of hope. She has given us so much to smile and laugh to. We are proud to know and celebrate her connection to the Village of Oak Park.”
Due to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday observance on Jan. 17, event organizer Lourdes Nicholls told The News on Thursday that official festivities will commence Jan. 15 at 10 a.m.
“Oak Park is not quite St. Olaf, but we are proud to be Betty White’s real hometown,” Nicholls said, referencing the Minnesota birthplace of White’s “Golden Girls” character Rose Nylund. “We look forward to celebrating her on Jan. 15.”
The event will include a giant birthday cake, a Betty White mural contest, a pet adoption event and the lighting of the local Lake Theatre’s marquee. Local businesses will feature specials of White’s favorite foods — which she named in a 2012 interview as “hot dogs and Red Vines and potato chips and French fries.”
A performance by Cindy Fee, the fellow Oak Parker who sang the iconic “Golden Girls” theme song “Thank You for Being a Friend,” is also scheduled.
Though raised in Los Angeles since early childhood, White, the star of sitcoms such as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Golden Girls” and “Hot in Cleveland,” was born in Oak Park in 1922.
Scaman is scheduled to give a proclamation for Betty White Day, and a representative from the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest will give a speech on what Oak Park looked like 100 years ago.
White’s 100th birthday is also being celebrated on social media with the Twitter hashtag #BettyWhiteChallenge, encouraging fans to donate $5 or more to local animal shelters or rescue organizations in her name, or adopt a shelter pet.
The five-time Emmy Award winner and Television Hall of Famer famously championed care and love for all animals.
“Both my mother and father were tremendous animal lovers,” she told Smithsonian magazine in 2012. “They imbued in me the fact that, to me, there isn’t an animal on the planet that I don’t find fascinating and want to learn more about.”
That year, she authored the book, “Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo.”