Celebs Are Doing Their Share--What About You?

Sean Mitchell’s article “A Charitable Role?” (May 25) makes evident the relationship between nonprofits in Los Angeles and the city’s primary industry, entertainment. Because of the number of charities competing for dollars in L.A., it is almost a must for an organization to attract a celebrity just to call attention to its cause.

I represent the Ocean Park Community Center, a nonprofit based in Santa Monica. We provide shelter and services to those who are homeless, mentally ill or victims of domestic violence. We have five projects, and without the support of industry people, both in front of and behind the camera, we would not be able to provide the services that we do. We depend upon the producers and agents of our homeless emergency services center to bring their friends to events or to get a movie premiere to benefit the project. Our domestic violence project annually honors a prominent female star (Kate Mulgrew and Christine Lahti, to name two) who brings attention to our project and the cause.

It is easy to point the finger at celebrities for not doing enough. But who among us can say that they do all that they can? We all need to realize that it is the duty of each of us, as we say in the Jewish tradition, “to help repair the world.” If each of us gave as much as we could, both financially and of our time, to those organizations and causes we believe in, our communities would be much better places to live.

We at the center are grateful for the contributions of our volunteers, and I urge those reading this to get involved--either with our agency or another in the community. Our agency’s motto for our 36 years of existence has been “a community helping others is a community helping itself.” Together we can make a difference.

ROXANN SMITH

Director of development

Ocean Park Community Center

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You have to have been asleep for the past three decades to write a sentence like the one slurring Jerry Lewis in Sean Mitchell’s piece (“One wonders where on the entertainment radar Jerry Lewis would have been in the last 30 years if not for the annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon”). Where was Mitchell in 1995 when Jerry Lewis (in “Damn Yankees”) became the highest-paid performer ever to appear on Broadway? Is the Las Vegas showroom scene in which Jerry headlined for years beyond Mitchell’s ambit? Did Mitchell miss the 18 films Jerry’s either written, directed, produced or starred in during this period?

The real question isn’t where Jerry would have been without the telethon; it’s where the Muscular Dystrophy Assn. would have been without Jerry, thanks to whose unparalleled philanthropic efforts nearly a billion dollars has been raised for MDA’s fight against 40 neuromuscular diseases. These funds have not only provided services that have benefited tens of thousands, but have bought scientific research that has placed us on the threshold of effective treatments for not only many of the diseases in MDA’s program, but untold other genetic conditions as well.

ROBERT ROSS

Senior vice president and executive director

Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

Tucson