Warren shares his story

Warren bills himself an entertainer, and man oh man is he ever.  He’s one of those guys you ask a question and before you know it, he’s telling you a doctor joke, and you laugh, really laugh, because this 70-year-old veteran of what was called the Borscht Belt in New York State’s Catskill Mountains knows his business.

“Many, many moons ago there was this area with big hotels and nice resorts up in the Catskills and that's where all my training and background came from,” Warren begins.  “I was a young kid out of school, and I’d go up there and do stand-up comedy and sing songs from Broadway musicals.  I spent most of my life doing that, and I'm still doing it to this day.”

For instance, he begins, “I work in a number of assisted living facilities, and recently I was approached, would I be interested in working with seniors-only residences And I said, ‘Fine. What do I have to do, anything special?’

“And they said, ‘We want you to interact with your audience, because that’s especially important to them if you're just going to get up there and sing.’

“And so I was singing with them, talking with them, getting them to tell me their names and things. And it was the most rewarding experience of my life. Honestly, I don't know how else to say it. So it's been very rewarding and a lot of fun.  Let me put it this way, I’m a people person, I'm very outgoing. I've spent a very good portion of my life in show business.” 

Then he tells another story, but this one’s not a joke.  It’s about how he does more than just make people laugh. “I like to give back,” he says and tells a story about how he, a Jewish man, stopped in a Catholic orphanage near his home on Long Island one winter day and asked the nuns what the kids would like for Christmas.  The nuns must have mentioned mittens, and so Warren found a local store willing to donate a truckload of mittens and scarves to a bunch of kids.  “Mittens,” he says.  “I never asked for anything back.  I didn't want anything.”

Warren has performed in many venues in his long career, on stages but also in lobbies, even in the parking lot where his audience is sitting in folding chairs.  “I don't care,” he says.  “I'm not such a big shot. You know, I have performed for 2000 people, and I performed for 10 people. I don't care. You know, you got to give back in everything you do. I’ve learned that if you can make somebody laugh and put a smile on their face, if only for a while, they forget their aches and pains or whatever they live with, it just makes your life better entertaining them.”

As Warren approached his Seventies and continued to entertain his audiences, he noticed his always dependable memory had started to falter a bit.  “I will say that I was having some mild issues,” he says.  “That's one of the key things in entertainment, memory. I was really having an issue with it, so after seeing some of the Prevagen commercials, I bought a couple of bottles.  Now that I've been taking it, I can honestly say that I have felt a difference in my memory.”

For a guy who’s always had a song in his heart, it’s nice to know Warren is still up there on stage, or even out on the parking lot, telling the good stories, singing the good songs.