16-year-old boy seeks 87-year-old comedienne

TV sit-com veteran Betty White is popular with the young and old – as was made clear recently when thousands of young Facebook users supported a campaign to get her to host the weekly NBC show “Saturday Night Live.” Last month, the 87-year-old comedienne opened the comedy program and earned rave reviews from critics.
Now, some local teens have started a Facebook campaign so that their friend Johnny Garcia, a 16-year-old North Bergen resident, can meet the former “Golden Girls” actress before she…er…goes to the golden great beyond.

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“Please please please spread this around so Johnny can meet at least one of the GOLDEN GIRLS.” – Facebook page
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Johnny will be a junior at the county’s competitive public high school, High Tech High, next year. He’s a member of the drama program and has been a fan of White since he was little.
“I just love that she’s just a great comedienne,” Garcia said last week, explaining his admiration of White. “Even though she’s getting older, she’s not afraid to push limits and do things that wouldn’t be the norm for women her age.”
Garcia’s mother, Melissa Grund of North Bergen, wrote in an e-mail that Johnny has been a fan of the 1980s TV show “Golden Girls” his entire life “thanks to me, since I always had him watch it with me. He wants so badly to meet Betty White and is afraid she will pass away and he will never have his chance of meeting at least one Golden Girl.”
All three of the other stars of the show – Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty – have passed away in just the last two years.
“I started watching the show when I was really young,” Johnny said last week. “That’s all I really do watch when I’m home.”

The campaign

As of a week ago Friday, 153 people had joined the Facebook page “Help Johnny Garcia meet Betty White.” But by Monday, four days after an article was posted at www.hudsonreporter.com, the number had increased to 197.
The page says: “Johnny has been watching the show Golden Girls since he came out of the womb. Owns every season on DVD and still continues to tape episodes that are on TV. He never goes a day without watching it or mentioning it! Please please please spread this around so Johnny can meet at least one of the GOLDEN GIRLS.”
The Facebook page is located at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HELP-JOHNNY-GARCIA-MEET-BETTY-WHITE/127251007296282.
The creator of the page has an admonition at the end. “We all love Johnny,” it says. “So do it for him.”