Civic Involvement
Fonzie is involved with community projects. He endorses Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1956 presidential campaign. At a rally Fonzie declares, "Hey, he won the war, didn't he!?" and "I like Ike! My bike likes Ike!" Eisenhower carried Wisconsin with 62% of the vote easily defeating Adlai Stevenson (supported by Richie Cunningham's more-researched speech). In that election, Eisenhower got 457 electoral votes to 73 for Stevenson.
The Fonz becomes involved with other issues. Highlighting actor Henry Winkler's off-camera work, several episodes dealt with civil rights of people with disabilities. Concerned that students with epilepsy were denied their chance to attend public school and play sports, he intervenes to resolve the issue. Such advocacy builds on the previous season's episode where Fonzie hired wheelchair-bound Don King to work in his garage, promising to provide workplace accommodation for his employee.
Concerned about other equal opportunity issues, Fonz wants Milwaukee racially integrated. Personally friends with African Americans, he becomes upset when a party in which Richie will welcome Hawaii into the Union gets boycotted. People have grown anxious because it will be racially integrated. Initially wanting to force people to attend, Fonzie learns from Mr. Cunningham that people cannot change their minds overnight. He volunteers to go south with Al and Freedom Riders to help integrate a segregated diner. Normally flirtatious with women, Fonzie is instead disgusted that the waitress does not serve black customers. At one point he tells her that he cannot date her because of her compliance with the diner policy.
A popular theory repeated by some of the cast and crew is that Fonzie's applying for and receiving a library card in the episode "Hard Cover," dated September 27, 1977 resulted in a 500% increase of library cards in the United States. This is not true.
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Famous quotes containing the words civic and/or involvement:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in decision-making. . . . Involving the adolescent in decisions doesn’t mean that you are giving up your authority. It means acknowledging that the teenager is growing up and has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)