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August 18, 2010
Rita Fischer: Raising Cash for the Cause
by Lauren Tuck
After her son Jay came out, Rita Fischer and her husband quickly became community activists with PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). In 1986, the Fischers raised funds in the first AIDS Walk New York. Today, the Brooklyn mom continues the walk—at age 86—and Rita’s Team is consistently a top fundraiser, bringing in more than half a million bucks in the battle against HIV/AIDS.
Even though your son is not HIV positive, you started doing the New York AIDS walk. What was it like when you began doing the event?
At the time it was the height of the epidemic. Every month another person that we’d gotten to know lost a child to AIDS. My husband said to me that we really ought to try and do something. What could we do, we thought. Then it came to us. We’d try to raise some money, and that’s how we became involved. The first year we walked, that was the first AIDS Walk [New York in 1986]. We raised $300 that year; this year I raised $57,000. I’ve already passed the $500,000 mark.
You seem to be a professional at raising money. Care to share your donation-raising secrets?
I have a mailing list of about 700 people. On January 1, I start to send out letters and people give me money. I think they’re afraid not to give me money. The trick is that I contact everybody. I start in January, and just recently I still got two donations.
My husband is gone almost 14 years now. I’ve carried on because I know that this would be what he’d want. It takes tremendous amounts of time to raise this money; people don’t just come and dump it at your doorstep. Just recently I got a note from somebody. The note was very unusual. The person lived someplace in Brooklyn. When I checked it out, I noticed he didn’t give me a donation this year. But he sent me a note that he’d moved from the area where he lived to a place in New York. He said he felt very bad that he did not donate, but he asked that I please not take him off my list because next year he planned to give me double. That’s fine with me!
I don’t raise this money alone. There are parents that I met when I first became involved in PFLAG, and they are still helping me raise money. They raise tremendous amounts of money for me, and they turn it all over to Rita’s Team, so if I meet somebody and they make the mistake of giving me their name and address, that’s it, you’re on the list and you never get off!
I know that you are very involved in Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, an LGBT Synagogue in New York. How did that happen and how has religion helped you?
I am very involved with the gay synagogue, and not because I’m a religious person. I’m Jewish, I know I’m Jewish and I like being Jewish, but I think the gay synagogue is a very important issue in the life of a lot of young gay people. I think that it is a place where they can feel very much at home, because we know that many religious organizations don’t welcome gay people. Over the years I have become more and more involved with the gay synagogue—it’s become my synagogue.
To me, the most important thing is that parents who have gay children should be very much involved. Parents should be there for their children, and they should speak up for their children. That’s been my motto since the day my son came out. When he came out to me and he told me he was gay, I didn’t even know what that meant! I knew there were gay people—you heard about gay people and yada yada—but who knew what it really meant? When my husband and I spoke about it, he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll send him to the doctors, and they’ll cure him.” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t think you should say that because I’m not so sure it’s a sickness.” He said, “What else could it be?” I’ve become a much, much better person for having a gay son and a gay son-in-law and being involved with the gay community.
That’s impressive that you and Jay have a unique relationship.
It’s not. He’s my child. When Jay and Michael went on a trip to Israel together, they called when they were there and said they wanted to take their vows. They also suggested since Alex, my husband, and I were celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary that we do it together, and we did! We had a double ceremony and we had a reception, maybe 150 people were there. And, let me tell you something, when I walked my child down the aisle, it seemed like a miracle because who would ever dream that parents would walk a gay son down an aisle. I was sure I was going to drop dead from a heart attack, that’s how excited I was. But thank God it didn’t happen. I’m a very proud parent, and my involvement at the congregation has been part of my development.
Do you have a goal for next year’s walk?
My goal is always to raise one dollar more than I raised the year before, that’s it. It’s not so easy [in] this economy to raise money. I work hard, and people know that it’s very important to me. I’ve been offered I can’t tell you how much money for my mailing list. [I say], “Oh no, you can’t have that!” That’ll die with me because that’s very private. If somebody gives me money, I have no right to give away their address—it’s not gonna happen. When I go to Florida for six months, I ship everything. But the mailing list comes with me in my hands because I don’t want it to ever get into anyone else’s hands—it’s very private.
And that’s my story! I’m not a baby. I’ve already forgotten how old I am, and I’m going to be 87. Maybe we’ll get a cure before I go to La-La land; wouldn’t that be nice? That’s my hope.
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