Lora ‘Skeets’ Friedkin, with her son Shawn,
raises money for a variety of causes, including
Stand Among Friends, which helps people
with disabilities. Photo provided
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
Perhaps the first thing you want to know when you meet Lora “Skeets” Friedkin is how the heck she got that nickname.
She’ll tell you with a smile that, as a child growing up in Farrell, Pa., she wore her hair pulled into a topknot tied with a bow. It fell over into her eyes making her resemble Skeezix, a comic strip character who appears in Gasoline Alley.
Her family called her “Little Skeetie” and the name stuck. But what this Boca Raton resident contributes to the people around her is anything but funny business.
“Fundraising is my avocation,” she says. “I gravitate to it because that’s the way my mind works.”
Over the years, she’s worked with the Democratic Party, B’Nai B’rith, the Symphony Guild, Hadassah, Sigma Lambda Sigma, World ORT, Women’s Division of the Jewish Federations and the National Council of Jewish Women.
Her Jewish heritage is important to her. “If you don’t help your own people, no one is going to,” says Friedkin, who has visited Israel 62 times.
Perhaps her most important fundraising has grown out of her personal experiences.
A car accident in 1992 left her son, Shawn, paralyzed from the chest down. It took the Jaws of Life to remove him from the car, she says.
Friedkin spent 14-hour days at the hospital for the next two weeks. “But I’d come home and there would be so many messages of love and support. I could feel the vibrations,” she says.
Her love of her son and concern for his well-being, as well as Shawn’s determination to live his life well, translated into Stand Among Friends.
Founded in 1997, “it was our way of helping people with disabilities,” she says. Although the program was started by Shawn and his wife, Lisa, with help from friends, Friedkin was on the board of directors and helped raise money.
She wrote 350 “passionate” letters through which she collected $300,000 as seed money for the organization. Since then, SAF has served 2,000 people and helped 500 disabled candidates find jobs.
In 2006, it partnered with the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at FAU and moved its headquarters into the school. And that’s when they opened the Center for the Study of Neurological Disabilities.
Here they help people who have problems speaking or seeing use computers to communicate. They also research and develop new products and services that can help people with disabilities live more fulfilling lives.
Today, SAF provides research, education and advocacy for people with disabilities including Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, stroke, epilepsy/seizure disorder, traumatic brain injury and multiple sclerosis.
“My mother is a very good supporter of my efforts,” says Shawn, who figures she’s raised over a million dollars for SAF.
But Friedkin’s fundraising didn’t stop there. In 2009, she learned that FAU’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies was having its state funding cut, and the school was to be folded into the communications department.
That was just a year after Friedkin suffered through a divorce after 48 years of marriage.
“My divorce taught me that I’m in control of my own self and not in the hands of anyone else but God,” she says. It also made her understand the value of women’s studies.
“At that time, I didn’t know what women’s studies were,” she says. But she learned the program had been in existence at FAU for 22 years. And she knew making women aware of their self-worth was important.
She joined the program’s 22-member advisory council, which helps with fundraising, advocacy and community awareness.
Her recent fundraising efforts for the center have included the screening of the film Refuge at the Living Room Theaters on campus. The movie depicts the struggle of a 50-year-old woman in an abusive relationship. Friedkin was one of the backers of the film.
It was written and directed by Mark Medoff, who also authored and directed Children of a Lesser God. He was in the class of 1958 with Friedkin at Miami Beach High School. They renewed their acquaintanceship at their 50-year class reunion.
Friedkin expressed interest in investing in Medoff’s work, so he sent her a copy of his script. “I read it until 2 a.m. and then told him I was in,” she says.
The money she’s helped raise for the Women’s Center supports student scholarships.
“I’m amazed when I think how far we’ve come,” Friedkin says.
For information about fundraising events for FAU’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, visit www.fau.edu/womensstudies or call 297-3865.
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