Rock Icon Dee Snider Brings Smile To Ailing Nurse [Video]
MILFORD, CT — Someday when this coronavirus business is all over (and that might be sooner than you think), if nothing else we'll all have at least a few stories to tell our children and grandchildren.
But your story probably won't involve Dee Snider, the famous front man of the 80s rock band, 'Twister Sister,' so it won't be as cool as Betty's story. (Betty's not her real name.) And if for some reason you're not familiar with Snider's band, you assuredly have heard his quintessential headbanger, "We're Not Gonna Take It," which has been featured on endless movies, television shows and commercials. Snider was also a contestant on President Trump's 'Apprentice' reality television show.
Betty is a nurse at a Connecticut Hospital. She became infected with COVID-19, and was hit hard, when she was exposed to the virus from a patient. She has been an RN for about two years, and her mom is also a nurse at the same hospital.
"They go to work every day, to try to help people, and here she is getting sick," Betty's sister Mary (ditto) told Patch.
It certainly was anything but fair.
This is where Dee Snider got involved.
Betty's soon-to-be sister-in-law is "friends" with the Twisted Sister frontman on Facebook, and shared the RN's plight with the heavy metal icon. What was there to lose? An emailed "Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery, Love Dee Snider" would have meant the world to Betty.
Nobody expected this.
Snider way, way, surpassed expectations when he delivered a nearly 2-minute video (below) to Betty that not only commiserated with her, but hoisted a banner for the entire nursing profession.
"As a nurse, you were in there fighting the fight, helping people, stressed to the max, exposed to the virus, and now you got it too," Snider sympathized in the video. "Every one of you nurses and care givers blow my mind, you're blowing everybody's minds!"
Maybe Snider did it because he feels an affinity for the area (The singer/songwriter hosted a morning radio show on WMRQ 104.1 out of Hartford from June 1999 to August 2003), or maybe because "He just did it to be a really nice guy," as Mary thinks. Either way, "it's pretty awesome."
Betty and her sisters "kind of grew up on" the music of Dee Snider and his elaborately coiffed compatriots, according to Mary, mainly because, "We have a sister who is a total 80s metal head."
Mary said Betty was "kind of blown away," when she saw the video for the first time. She says her sister is a "humble person," and amazed that someone like Dee Snider would go to this kind of trouble for her.
"I mean, it's freakin' Dee Snider!" Mary said. "For him to make a video like that just brings a smile to everyone's face... She is going to have that for the rest of her life."
Here's wishing it's a long one.
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Warning: Some of the language is not safe for work, because, c'mon, it's freakin' Dee Snider...
This article originally appeared on the Milford Patch
