NC grandma, Alzheimer’s sufferer with hundreds of thousands of online fans, dies at 86

Betty Pettit — a Mooresville woman who late in life unwittingly became an overnight social-media star as her son documented and publicized her worsening daily struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, via videos that inspired many while putting off a few — died at home in hospice care on Friday. She was 86.

Her youngest son, Josh Pettit, also of Mooresville, confirmed the death on Facebook and on the TikTok account he had dedicated to her.

“This has been a journey and we are so grateful for all the love and support of our family has received. We will continue to share about this horrible disease and try to help as many people as we can who are dealing with this,” he said.

It was Josh who recorded the video that would thrust his mom into the spotlight: While staying in a rented Myrtle Beach home with his parents Betty and Bob over the Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, Josh captured footage of Betty kindly and gently talking with her own reflection in a mirror as if it was another person.

Josh posted the video on both Facebook and TikTok, along with the caption “Betty Pettit made a new friend at the beach,” and within 24 hours it had garnered more than 1 million views.

He says people almost immediately started requesting more videos of his mom, so he obliged them; while still on vacation he posted several more videos of her, and the size of their audience continued to swell. From that point on, he never let up, continuing to share a steady diet of videos starring his mom and their daily interactions right up to the end of her life.

Betty and Bob originally hailed from a small town about 25 miles south of Buffalo, New York. They were childhood sweethearts, having met in fifth grade and having started dating as teenagers. The couple was married in 1959.

Bob would make his living working for a consulting firm in Buffalo — as a civil engineer on residential projects involving sewer systems and water lines — while Betty served as a stay-at-home mom first to their two older sons, Dave and John, and then to Josh, who is 13 years younger than Dave.

After Bob retired in 1998, the couple bought a motor home that they lived in full-time for nearly a decade as they traveled the U.S. In 2007, they sold the motor home to purchase a fifth wheel camper that they parked permanently at an RV park in Florida, beginning a cycle of alternating between spending six months down there and six months in North Carolina with Josh, who then was living in the Northlake area.

It was during this period that Betty’s health began to deteriorate.

First, she was diagnosed with a bowel issue that turned into a hernia necessitating surgery. Then she had a hip replacement.

She also was beginning to show several early signs of senility. For one, Bob noticed Betty had taken to not looking her friends in the eye when she talked to them, and that she routinely needed him to clarify things being said to her. Another red flag: He ran the bingo game in the park, and she had always helped him count the money; but she started having trouble counting it.

Then in 2014, Betty was diagnosed with lung cancer, so they decided to sell the fifth wheel and move in with Josh full-time so they could establish full-time residency in the Charlotte area for the sake of being able to have consistency in her medical care. In the process of relocating, they found out she had kidney cancer, too. Both cancers were successfully removed via yet another major surgery.

(For what it’s worth, the National Institutes of Health has indicated that some studies suggest exposure to anesthetics may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s.)

By 2017, Betty’s illness was debilitating enough to be deeply concerning: At Disneyland in California that February, for instance, she told Bob she was going to the restroom and just plain wandered off, causing the family to alert authorities and triggering a statewide Silver Alert.

But despite the seriousness of Betty’s situation, Josh and Bob tried to keep things light whenever possible.

In a 2022 interview with The Charlotte Observer, they fondly recalled goofing around with her while taking a break to sit during a walking tour of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier in Charleston, South Carolina, on a hot day in the summer of 2018, when Josh took video with his cellphone of Betty’s surprised reaction to Bob sneakily pressing a cold bottle of water against her arm.

Josh posted the clip to TikTok, but only a very small number of people saw it — until Betty’s mirror video went viral more than three years later.

Once that happened, huge numbers of users eager for more Betty began combing through Josh’s older posts and resurrected the water-bottle-on-the-arm one, eventually propelling it to more than 5 million views.

That winter, Betty became something of a sensation. She was featured in December 2021 in a story by The Daily Mail of London (and in 2022 by another on CNN); praised in a Christmas-Eve service at their church in Mooresville for the “kindness, and love, and grace” she showed in the mirror video; and was sent so many gifts and cards by adoring social-media fans that Josh had to set up a special PO box for his mother.

At the same time, he did get some blowback, for posting light-in-tone videos of his mom’s dark struggles, which could often include her botching (or faking her way through) answers to painfully simple questions.

“There’s a very small amount of people that’ll say, ‘You’re exploiting her. She wouldn’t want these videos out here,’” Josh told The Observer in 2022. “And I usually say, ‘We made funny videos when she was well.’ As soon as videos and Facebook were a thing, we were silly on Facebook.”

“And it builds awareness,” Josh said of putting her and her Alzheimer’s battle on public display. “I didn’t necessarily go into it thinking, ‘I’m bringing awareness.’ I really was just posting a funny video. I had no idea the impact that that would have. ... I mean, some of the comments will bring tears to your eyes, when (someone) will relate to their loved one. It’s bringing a lot of people joy, and awareness (about Alzheimer’s).

“It’s a disease that probably needs more attention, because I don’t think a lot of people understand it.”

In addition to her husband Bob and sons Josh, Dave and John, Betty is survived by four adult grandchildren, and hundreds of thousands of devoted fans across Facebook and TikTok. A funeral service will be held at Cavin-Cook Funeral Home in Mooresville on a date to be determined.