When I was growing up, my family really didn’t have any “traditions,” at least not what I’d call traditions today. But since we’ve just celebrated Labor Day weekend, I remembered something that we did every year on that weekend — we watched the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon.
I guess a lot of people tuned in every year to watch the weekend-long telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis, who served as the M.C. for all kinds of entertainment — sometimes very professional and other times not so much. And there was the constant “encouragement” for all the viewers to donate to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Every year, the show dominated by Jerry Lewis, delivered a mix of show business schmaltz and true-life, touching stories of people who had muscular dystrophy. Whether you liked it or not, it was live television. I remember as the hours rolled on, Lewis got alternately cranky and teary, pleading with everyone to make the donations on the tote board increase.
I don’t remember watching this telethon after I left home, but I looked it up and apparently Jerry Lewis last hosted the Muscular Dystrophy telethon in 2010 — Jerry Lewis died in 2017.
The first MDA Labor Day Telethon was broadcast on only one station — WNEW-TV in New York. According to the MDA, the telethon raised nearly $2 billion over the years.
I read an article a few years ago that indicated that before the telethon ended, people who had muscular dystrophy — a group of diseases that cause muscles to progressively weaken — and those people’s advocates objected to lewis treating those with the disease as pathetic victims.
I’m not sure if the Muscular Dystrophy Association still holds a telethon — obviously it was a good cause, but I suspect it’s one of those “things of the past,” although I have to admit it was a one-of-a-kind experience.
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