Vicki Lawrence, a comedienne and performer best known for her unforgettable characters on “The Carol Burnett Show” and “Mama’s Family,” was the ideal keynote speaker for an inaugural Living Joyfully Luncheon at the Quail Valley River Club to benefit the Senior Resource Association.
“Today is all about connection, community and celebrating the joy we create when we support one another. Something Senior Resource Association strives to bring to older adults every single day,” said Karen Deigl, SRA CEO, before thanking everyone involved.
Deigl showed a brief video in which a man shared how the SRA Day-Away program helps his wife with mobility and memory issues while allowing him to focus on other responsibilities, and the caregiver daughter of a 97-year-old woman said her mother’s Meals on Wheels deliveries ease her own workload.
“As you hear stories, it reminds us why this work matters and why your support truly changes lives,” said Deigl, before introducing Lawrence, who engaged guests with entertaining stories of her life.
“I’m going to talk mostly to the women. You guys, I love you, but it’s always very cathartic for me to speak to women, because I feel like we’re all going through the same stuff together,” said Lawrence.
As a youngster, she said, she thought she was “really weird,” before learning as she got older that we’re all alike.
As her friend said to her: “When you’re in your 20s, all you do is worry about what people think of you. When you get to your 40s, you don’t care what anybody thinks about you. When you get to be 60, you find out there never was anybody thinking about you.”
Her foray into acting began with a Fireman’s Ball Miss Fireball contest. When the local newspaper noted her resemblance to a young Carol Burnett, she enclosed the article in a fan letter expressing her wish to meet. Remarkably, Burnett responded, attended the contest and got the ball rolling on her long and fruitful career.
She began playing Burnett’s sister at age 18 during the “golden age of Hollywood,” sharing the studio with myriad other popular shows of the era.
Relaying stories of the hilarity caused by the “troublemaker” Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, she added that Burnett was often the first person to “lose it” and double over with laughter.
After doing the spinoff “Mama’s Family,” she hosted her own celebrity-filled talk show, “Vicki!”
When it was canceled due to creative differences with the syndicator, she went into a three-year depression, “like a dark hole.” She credits her husband Al and the 9-week-old Labrador retriever he brought home with pulling her out of it.
Hoping to make people laugh again, she created the touring comedy production, “Vicki and Mama: A Two Woman Show.”
“I thought it was an incredibly funny title because people think of us as different people.”
The show opened in Las Vegas shortly after 9/11. Then as now, she wants to make people laugh and take them away for 90 minutes from all that is happening in the world.
“It’s been an incredible experience for me, getting out and meeting my fans. I feel like I go into a room full of fans and walk out full of friends,” said Lawrence.
“I guess what I want to say to you girls is that I never realized my motto is as true as it is. Life is much too serious to be taken seriously. You have to keep laughing because if you don’t, you’ll slit your wrist. And if you’re a mother, like me, you’re going to have to clean up the mess. So, I highly advocate laughing.”
For more information, visit SeniorResourceAssociation.org.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
