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Sanford Weill
Financier and Philanthropist
Sanford Weill: The teacher I think that really helped me the most was a teacher by the name of Clare Franz, who was a Latin teacher at Peekskill Military Academy where I went to high school, and was also the tennis coach. And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City. And he sort of helped me through a lot of things in life, what I got in the classroom from how to learn how to think in Latin and be deliberate, to competing, and trying to be a gentleman and do it the right way on the tennis court.
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Elie Wiesel
Nobel Prize for Peace
He was a Hasid, meaning a member of the Hasidic community, and I loved him, I adored him. So, thanks to him, I became a Hasid too. And my mother -- who actually continued his tradition -- she's the one who brought me to Hasidic Masters. And all the stories I tell now -- I've written so many books with Hasidic tales -- these are not mine, these are theirs, my mother's and my grandfather's. My father taught me how to reason, how to reach my mind. My soul belonged to my grandfather and my mother. They enriched me, of course. They influenced me profoundly, to this day. When I write, I have the feeling, literally, physically, that one of them is behind my back, looking over my shoulder and reading what I'm writing. I'm terribly afraid of their judgment. After the war -- I wrote about it in my autobiography so I want to come back to that subject -- I had a teacher in France who was totally crazy. He spoke 30 languages, literally 30 languages. One day he learned that I knew Hungarian, and he didn't. He felt so bad that he learned Hungarian in two weeks. In two weeks he knew more about Hungarian literature than I did. Then I had, in New York, a very great teacher, a very great Master. His name was Saul Lieberman, a Talmudic Scholar. I've studied Talmud all my life. I still do, even now, every day. For 17 years we were friends, as only a real teacher and a good student can be.
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Lenny Wilkens
Basketball Hall of Fame
The two best players would choose up teams and I never got picked and so I'd wait for a chance to play and we used to play four on four. So when my turn finally came I would select three players to play with me. And now here I waited all this time, it's my game, and they wouldn't pass the ball to me. So every time I got my hands on it I just shot it and they started calling me a "heaver." And so, I started to go to the playgrounds to try and learn to play. I played CYO [Catholic Youth Organization] ball and that's how I got to know Father Mannion and he kept encouraging me. He would tell me, "If you want to get better at it you have to learn how to dribble. You have to learn how to pass," you know, things like that. And he would set up chairs for me to dribble in and out of, stuff like that. And what he saw in me, I don't know, but certainly he had to see something. He always put me in positions of responsibility and things happened.
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