Famous Porcupine: Henry
Allergic to School
Henry’s parents escaped Nazi Germany and came to the United States, settling in New York City in 1939. His uncle and grandmother (on his father’s side of the family) were murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. Henry was born in 1945.
Henry had a difficult relationship with his father who wanted him to go into the family business. Henry wanted to act. However, he struggled mightily in school. He was completely confused and said he felt like he was “allergic to school.” Reading was especially tough, and Henry says he did not read a book all the way through until the age of 31.
In school, he lived in a constant state of anxiety. He used humor as a shield and was known as a class comedian. His teachers accused him of being lazy and not living up to his potential even though he was trying as hard as he could. He just couldn’t succeed. He had to take Geometry four times and couldn’t walk in his graduation ceremony because he didn’t finally pass Geometry (with a D-) until that summer.
Dummer Hund
His teachers weren’t the only ones who thought he was lazy. His parents also berated him for laziness and grounded him constantly. They even taunted him with the German nickname, “dummer hund” (dumb dog). They said he was an embarrassment. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he found out that he had dyslexia.
Fortunately, he learned coping strategies. As an actor, when the whole cast and production crew would gather to read the script out loud before filming, he couldn’t read the script, which was humiliating. So, he learned to ask for the script ahead of time. He would read the script one word at a time and practice over and over again so that he had the script nearly memorized.
Television Hall of Fame
After (barely) graduating from high school, Henry was accepted to Emmerson College in Boston where he majored in theater. His reading difficulties continued, and he nearly failed his first and second years, but he managed to get by and was then accepted in the Yale School of Drama. He went on to have an incredible career that included acting, directing, and writing. He has won a Primetime Emmy, two Daytime Emmys, two Gold Globe Awards, two Critics Choice Awards and has been inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. He played one the iconic TV characters of my childhood on the show Happy Days.
(To see this famous porcupine, click an arrow below.)
In addition to an incredible Hollywood career, perhaps most notably as Aurther Fonzarelli, “The Fonz,” Henry Winkler has also written a series of children’s books about a bright boy with dyslexia: Hank Zipzer. In an interview with PBS News Weekend, he talks about how he reassures children who are struggling in school: “School might be hard, but it has nothing to do with how brilliant you are.”
Click here to read stories of more famous porcupines. Be sure to check out the book that inspired this series: Hugging Porcupines: Month-by-Month Strategies for Supporting Our Most Challenging Students.
Citations: The information for this story was drawn from several sources:
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