OTTAWA — After a morning visit to the students at Hillel Academy, Henry Winkler regaled an evening audience at Centrepointe Theatre with his charm, humour and inspirational message at the Sept. 15 launch of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s 2010 fundraising campaign.
Henry ‘The Fonz’ Winkler
Winkler’s keynote address attracted a crowd of 800 people of all ages – from those familiar with his children’s books to those who mostly remember him as the Fonz on the long-running TV show Happy Days.
The campaign hopes to raise $5 million this year. The federation set the same goal for 2009, but only managed to collect $4.5 million.
The poor economy was part of the problem, federation executive director Jack Silverstein told the crowd, but some top donors also moved away and others died.
He encouraged people to give in spite of the recession, because the need for services is even greater now.
In his remarks, Winkler said he would never have dreamed how his life would unfold, growing up in New York City as the perpetually underachieving child of parents who constantly belittled him.
From being a child who had great difficulty learning to read to becoming a successful author of a dozen children’s books is quite a leap. However, in the words of Theodor Herzl, which Winkler has adopted as his motto, “If you will it, it is no dream.”
Though known for years as a successful actor, one who studied at the prestigious Yale School of Drama, Winkler struggled to get there.
He says that he knew from the age of seven that he wanted to become an actor, but “I am in the bottom three per cent in America academically. I applied to 28 colleges and got into two. In my first year, I almost flunked out of [Boston’s] Emerson [College],” he said. “I finally graduated and applied to Yale School of Drama and somehow was accepted.”
There must have been a fair amount left out of the story, but it did have a happy ending, and Winkler did go on to achieve success in his chosen field.
Only when Winkler was in his 30s and his son was diagnosed as dyslexic did he realize that he had the same symptoms and problems. What a difference that made to his self-confidence.
“If a child’s image of himself is so bad because he can’t keep up, he believes he is stupid,” Winkler said.
It didn’t help that his parents reinforced that message by constantly belittling him, he added. It was only after he became a star did they tell him – and the world – how proud they were of him.
Winkler encouraged his audience to make the most of their resources – to be the best they can be and show kindness and compassion to others.
“We must never forget who we are and where we came from,” he said. “Thank you so much for listening to me – my parents never did.”
Longtime Jewish community volunteer and activist Julia Koschitzky of Toronto was a special guest speaker at the campaign launch – her third of the week, after Winnipeg and Toronto.
“Seeing the young people in the room this evening gives you confidence in the future of the Jewish community of Ottawa,” she said. “We are all aware that our global Jewish family is in decline… and that’s why 80 per cent of all our efforts in our communities is focused on the next generation.”