During her remarkable 91-year acting career Betty White won eight Emmy Awards, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy. Her roles on two comedic television sitcoms, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Golden Girls,” solidified a place among entertainment legends.

Among the many tributes that poured in following her death on New Year’s Eve was a tweet from the U.S. Army.

“We are saddened by the passing of Betty White,” the Army posted. “Not only was she an amazing actress, she also served during World War II as a member of the American Women’s Voluntary Services. A true legend on and off the screen.”

The largest of a number of women’s auxiliary organizations during the war, AWVS members trained to work on the home front. At its height, the group had more than 300,000 members, according to the Military Times. They sold war bonds, delivered messages, worked in navigation, aerial photography, aircraft spotting and fire safety. Volunteers also drove ambulances, trucks, cycle corps and dog-sleds.

White’s volunteer service in World War II is well-known to military historians. A few years ago, I helped organize a display on the USO and Hollywood’s influence on the home front of World War II for a military museum in Southwest Florida. Many celebrities served as volunteers in canteens across America, entertaining the troops just before they left for service overseas.

As a 19-year-old volunteer for the AWVS in 1941, White drove a truck, delivering supplies to the Hollywood Hills. At night she helped at USO dances that were held for the soldiers before they shipped out overseas.

My favorite Betty White film is “The Lost Valentine,” a 2011 Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-television drama that also featured Jennifer Love Hewitt as a television journalist assigned to tell the story of the wartime bride. Based on the novel of the same name by James Michael Pratt - a 1998 New York Times and USA Today bestseller - the wartime romance shows how love can be worth fighting - and dying for.

The film begins with White as a young bride separated by war. For six decades she holds onto hope that her fighter pilot husband, who was missing in action, would someday return to her. For her performance, White received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.

A member of The Greatest Generation who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, White was perfectly cast for the part, drawing on her personal experiences during the war. When World War II ended in 1945, she married U.S. Army Air Force pilot Dick Barker. The couple moved to an Ohio chicken farm owned by Barker’s parents. That marriage, however, lasted less than a year.

She later appeared as a regular on game shows, including “Password” in 1961. There she met her third husband - Allen Ludden - the person she called the love of her life.

Throughout her busy life in the entertainment field, White made time for animal causes, and even wrote three books on the subject. She developed that interest as a child when her family took care of as many as 15 dogs at a time during the Depression.

In an interview 11 years ago, White reminisced that the Depression-World War II period was a strange time. She said things seemed out of balance, not unlike what the world is experiencing today.

She also said that mankind never seems to learn from past mistakes.

Today, the history revisionists and vandals who cry racism and want to erase our past by destroying statues and monuments are not helping but instead, causing deeper divisions around the country.

In that interview over a decade ago about things being out of balance, White succinctly summed it up in a few words: “We’ll never learn.”

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.