One needs only watch one of Betty Greenwood's videos on Youtube.com to know that she was a firecracker.
Dressed in a red sequined jacket and seated behind the keyboard, the old-school cabaret performer delivered this joke in one of those videos:
"A man comes home from work and his wife says, 'The bathroom faucet is leaking, could you fix it?' (The husband) says, 'Who do I look like, Mr. Plumber?'" Greenwood tells her audience of 700 at the Miamisburg Moose Lodge. "Next day he comes home and the wife says, 'Honey, the battery in the car is dead. Would you please replace it?' The husband said, 'Who do I look like, Mr. Goodwrench?' Next day he comes home and everything is fixed. He said, 'Honey, how did you do that?' She said, 'Well, our neighbor John came over and he fixed everything and he didn't charge us a cent. He said I could bake him a cake or give him some sex.' 'What kind of cake did you bake him?' She said, 'Who did I look like, Betty Crocker?'"
Susie McLaughlin, Greenwood’s long-time friend, caregiver and partner on stage or 14 years, called Greenwood “the master of the double entendre.”
“She wouldn’t take you there,” McLaughlin said. “You would take yourself there.”
A Dayton native born to Amos and Myrtle (Savage) McGriff on July 15, 1922, Greenwood performed at many of Dayton’s then-thriving supper and night clubs, including the Paul’s Cafe, The Tropics and Brown Derby.
“She was the most charismatic, magnetic and vibrant person. She made you feel like the most important person in the world,” McLaughlin said. “She was a force.”
A grandmother to four and great grandmother to one, Greenwood was proceeded in death by her parents; brother, Amos "Mack" McGriff, Jr. and sons Michael L Greenwood in 2006 and Glenn D. Greenwood in 2012.
Granddaughter Jackie Greenwood of Huber Heights said the death is a loss to many.
“She touched a lot of lives and that made her happy. She lead a life that a lot of people dream of with the notoriety and fun she had,” Jackie Greenwood said. ” She was a lot of fun to be around.”
Betty Greenwood started her career while a student at Roosevelt High School in Dayton.
During her decades-long career in entertainment, she put smiles on thousands of faces and met and befriended some of the biggest names on stage and screen who visited as part of the Kenley Players shows. She owned Cascades Nightclub on Salem Avenue in Dayton from 1959 until closing it in 1974.
McLaughlin said Greenwood knew Burt Reynolds, Liberace and a long list of other performers.
“The stars would do their shows and then come to her club,” McLaughlin said.”They loved her.”
Greenwood co-founded the Active Angels ministry with McLaughlin, the author of a 2003 book on Greenwood’s life called “The Betty Greenwood Story.”
She last performed on stage in February before becoming ill and played her piano a week before her death.
In 2007, she told Dayton Daily News Columnist Dale Huffman that she felt blessed.
“I am basically pretty shy. But there is something inside me that comes alive when there is an audience. I have loved the exchanges with the audience and the spontaneous fun,” Greenwood told Huffman.
A memorial service for Greenwood will be held at Tobias Funeral Home, 5471 Far Hills Ave. in Kettering, 7 p.m. Monday, April 21.
Visitation will be 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are requested for Active Angels, 3225 Southdale Drive, Unit 12, Kettering, Ohio 45409.
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