Man’s loss proving gain for area students
7/17/2006 Fort Worth, TX Bob Ray Sanders StarTelegram.com A 75-year-old Fort Worth man is the Billy Graham of the anti-smoking crusade. When Jerry Berkowitz finishes talking to schoolchildren, they start coming down the aisles to testify -- to ask questions and, in some cases, to give him something he gave up 25 years ago. At his home the other day, he recalled his first speech. It was to more than 300 students at Aledo Middle School. The youngsters were seated on the gymnasium floor, and as Berkowitz prepared to address them, he remembered administrators' warnings that the kids likely would be a little restless, partly because it was the last period of the day. But as soon as he began to speak, sounding somewhat like a robot from a science fiction movie, the kids were mesmerized, he said. At the end of his 25-minute presentation, "a little kid about this tall [just over waist high] handed me a pack of Marlboros and said, 'Hey, mister, take this away from me. I'll never smoke again, I promise.' " Soon afterward at a similar event, a young girl approached him. He had noticed her on the front row, staring straight at him during the entire speech. The girl was deaf, Berkowitz learned, and she had been reading his lips. "She handed me a brand of cigarettes I had never seen before and said, 'I've been trying to quit for years.' And I burst out crying," Berkowitz said as tears welled in his [...]