Early years
Weiner was born in Dayton on April 7, 1920.
She attended Northwestern University in Chicago majoring in communications.
Weiner spent some time as a comedian on a WDTV (Channel 2) daytime television show during the 1950s. She also did a daily WLW Radio show.
The piano player
Weiner met the man she would marry during World War II, when her family hosted a party and invited a few army officers. Someone told Betty that there was “a handsome young lieutenant playing piano downstairs.”
When she approached the pianist, he stood up to greet her and said, “Sing something for me.” She married Sidney Weiner in 1944. They were married for 67 years.
Credit: Contributed photo
Credit: Contributed photo
“My family was very musical,” she once said. “My parents put on shows at Temple Israel and put us kids in the shows. I always said I’d marry a piano player. I was about to marry someone else, when along came my piano player.”
She and her husband provided entertainment for a host of local charities through the year, writing skits and songs. They moved to Sarasota in 1952, but returned to Dayton for several months each year.
The couple had four children.
She also put on numerous performances with her husband and daughters Wendy and Lori to benefit organizations in Dayton and Southwest Florida.
In Florida she loved to play tennis, go scuba diving and spend time on their boat.
Elder-Beerman Thanksgiving meals
Weiner was proud of the work she did in pulling together the funds and resources to feed over 3,000 of Dayton’s homeless annually at Elder-Beerman’s Thanksgiving dinner.
In 1969, Arthur Beerman hosted the largest dinner party the city had ever seen. It was the first Beerman Annual Thanksgiving Day Dinner.
He put Weiner in charge.
He told her, “You are the only person crazy enough to do what I want,” said Weiner in a 2015 interview, who was then the store’s radio and television spokeswoman.
Weiner got little instruction beyond that the dinner had to be the same as the one Beerman enjoyed at his own house on Thanksgiving.
Weiner said she told Beerman she would be happy to orchestrate his dinner for the “hungry, the lonely and the needy.”
“I wanted it to be a fun party,” she said.
Mother Goose
Weiner was familiar to Dayton audiences for portraying Mother Goose for the Dayton Philharmonic’s Kinder Concerts for 11 years, staring in 1963.
Credit: JON GRAUBARTH
Credit: JON GRAUBARTH
As Mother Goose, her role was as storyteller, she introduced the music and visited local schools on behalf of the orchestra.
Betty Sue Wydman of Kettering worked with Weiner when both were involved with the Dayton Philharmonic Women’s Association. She remembers her as “active, hard-working and full of fun.”
Other endeavors
Weiner co-produced the Dayton Holiday Festival, which ran annually over three months in Dayton.
“My three years as director was the hardest job I ever had. It was also the most challenging. It was the only festival in the U.S. where nothing cost anything. (Everything was donated.) It was lights, love and laughter,” she once said.
Weiner spent her life as a performer, starring in commercials and her own TV show, playing leads in summer stock productions, singing with the popular vocal group The Daytones.
“Betty Weiner was a force,” said Bob Goldenberg, whose family was friendly with the Weiners. “ When she entered the room she commanded everyone’s attention- attention which she loved sharing with her husband Sid. In those days Broadway shows came to Dayton but if Dayton were ever to have come to Broadway it would have been through Betty and Sid. And her heart was a big as her personality.”
In 1961 she became a partner in the Cummings-Sharkey-Weiner Talent Agency, which represented Dayton-area models and actors for TV commercial production.
She moved with her daughter Wendy Weiner Bichel to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico at the age of 102, and she the rest of her life there.
“It was time for Mom to be with one of her children, so being the daughter, I signed up,” explained Wendy in a 2023 interview. “I knew the quality of care would be better and very loving here in Mexico where I live much of the year, and I would ‘have her back.’ I asked her, “Mom, I want you to come and live in Mexico. Do you think you have another adventure in you? ‘You know it!,’ she said.
During a speech during a fund-raiser in 1986, she reminisced about her life.
“My family encouraged me to live my life the way I wanted to. I am a happy person. I guess I was born wearing rose-colored glasses.”
Funeral services
Funeral services will be held on Sunday, April 6 at 11 a.m. at Beth Abraham Cemetery Chapel, 1817 W. Schantz Ave., Kettering.
Notes to the family may be sent to Randall Weiner, Randall@weinercording.com, for distribution.
