Henry Winkler’s rise to success is a story not of privilege or natural ease, but of grit, misunderstanding, and redemption. The man millions came to love as Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli on Happy Days spent most of his youth believing he was stupid. For decades, he carried the scars of that false belief — until a diagnosis at age thirty-one revealed the truth. It changed everything, not just for him, but for countless children who would later see their own struggles reflected in his.
Winkler was born in 1945 to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution before World War II. They arrived in America with little but their education and their fierce belief that success came through hard work and academic excellence. To them, school wasn’t just important — it was sacred. So when young Henry came home with poor grades, confusion, and excuses, his parents’ disappointment was harsh and unrelenting.
“They thought I was lazy,” Winkler recalled in an interview with The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. “I was called lazy, I was called stupid, I was told I was not living up to my potential.” He remembers his father shouting, “If you would only apply yourself!” but no matter how hard he tried, the words on the page refused to make sense.
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