Henry Winkler among the highlights of Town Hall South speaker series
Henry Winkler
Douglas Brinkley
Lynsey Addario
Henry Winkler has had a varied career over the last 50 years — actor, producer, director, prolific author and advocate for people with dyslexia.
But to many American television viewers who came of age in the 1970s and early 1980s, Winkler will forever be “the Fonz,” the leather-clad rebel who piloted a motorcycle through the streets of Milwaukee and epitomized 1950s cool in the hit ABC-TV sitcom “Happy Days.”
Now 77, Winkler has said his association with the character limited the types of roles he could have after “Happy Days” closed up shop. However, he still looks back fondly on the decade he was putting his thumbs in the air and saying “Ayyy.”
“I loved doing it,” Winkler said on NBC-TV’s “Today” earlier this year. “I loved playing ‘the Fonz.’ … I would not have traded it.”
At the end of October, Winkler’s memoir, “Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond” will be published, and he will surely be talking about it and all the other aspects of his career when he stops at Upper St. Clair High School for a talk in March.
Winkler is the most well-known name in the 2023-24 Town Hall South speakers series, which kicks off Tuesday, Nov. 7. Its origins date back to 1969, when the series was started as an outreach program of nearby Westminster Presbyterian Church. Its guests over the years have included a wide array of authors, media figures and movers and shakers, including consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, poet Maya Angelou, chef Anthony Bourdain, “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace, and television journalist David Brinkley. The organizers of Town Hall South donate a portion of each season’s net profits to charities in the Pittsburgh region.
All the lectures are held at 10 a.m. in the Upper St. Clair High School auditorium.
This season’s speakers are:
n Lynsey Addario, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who has covered every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of her generation, and spent most of 2022 on assignment for The New York Times in Ukraine, Tuesday, Nov. 7.
n Ruth Reichl, a onetime restaurant critic for The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, editor-in-chief for Gourmet Magazine, and host of Eating Out Loud” specials on The Food Network, Tuesday, Dec. 5.
n Kobie Boykins, lead principal engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 6.
n Henry Winkler, Tuesday, March 19.
n Douglas Brinkley, an historian who has written books on Rachel Carson, Walter Cronkite, Jimmy Carter, Rosa Parks and more, Tuesday, April 9.
Visit townhallsouth.org for more information.