Our celebration ofjewish influences on Detroit's 300-year history conclu
with the following biographies. These profiles were selected by a team of
local Jewish historians and are by no means a comprehensive list of Jewish
contributions to the dot. Last week's installment can be accessed on the
Jew-;sh News Web site, IN Online, www.de itjewishnews.corn
— Keri Guten Cohen,
story development editor
Stanley J. Winkelman: Total Involvement
ALAN KANDEL
Special to the Jewish News
n the midst of the riot that gripped
Detroit in 1967, Stanley Winkelman was
driving arou cd the city viewing his dam-
aged department stores and observing the
widespread looting.
He later wrote, "It was at that moment I real-
ized that this was not a race riot in the usual
sense, since looting was done by blacks and
whites together. The disenchanted people
involved were not so much anti-whit' as anti-
society, and upset because they did hot feel a
part of the growing affluence of the times."
Eager to heal and rebuild Detroit, Winkelman
joined with other civic leaders to establish the
New Detroit Committee, an organization he
helped shape and of which he became chairman.
Now known as New Detroit: The Coalition, the
organization continues to work to improve race
relations in the city.
A Sense Of Responsibility
Winkelman made his mark as a business and
fashion leader. Taking over a firm founded by his
grandparents in the Upper Peninsula, he expand-
ed it into 100 store
Beyond his business successes, as former Detroit
Free Press editor Joe Stroud noted in his column of
Aug. 23, 1999, Winkelman possessed a strong sense
of social justice and community responsibility
In fulfillment of that commitment, he aligned
himself with a seemingly endless number of civic
organizations. He was actively involved with the
United Foundation, the National Conference of
Christians and Jews, Greater Detroit Round
.
Table, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State
University and the University of Michigan.
In 1962, at the request of then-Detroit Mayor
Jerome P. Cavanagh, Winkelman joined the
Detroit Commission on Community Relations.
He called on the Detroit Board of Education to
recruit more minori ty teachers and sought to
make the Detroit Police Department more
responsive to the city's African-American citizens.
In April 1980, Fortune magazine, in a story on
Detroit's leaders, included Winkelman along
with Henry Ford II, Max M. Fisher, Joseph
Hudson, Alan E. Schwartz and A. Alfred
Taubman.
Throughout his life, Winkelman was deeply
involved with the Jewish community. He served
as vice president of Temple Beth El and presi-
dent of the Jewish Community Council. In
1979, he received the Fred M. Butzel Award, the
highest honor bestowed by the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit. In accepting the award,
Winkelman issued a clarion call for the Jewish
Right: Stanley j. Winkelman
Top of page:
Downtown Detroit
circa 1910-1919.
community to be linked to the city of Detroit
and its people.
"Prayer, peoplehood and culture were not
enough. ... Involvement in the general -commu-
nity is an important aspect of involvement in the
Jewish community," he said.
In his memory, the Winkelman family, in
1999, established the Stanley and Margaret
Winkelman Fund for Social Justice to be admin-
istered by the Federation. The fund is to endow
programs "that foster inclusion and opportunity
for all citizens." ■
It: ,. , , -
'
lAwzr.:;74r,,,- " ; ,q7,.:,, %;;;:mvpRA<-7.7:z7 A
-,
,,
.v
,,,,,
,.. , :
6-
„,
,
A.,.,.
.,,
,,, ". i,;i0;.:,;,.,
: - , ,
, . : , . , ,,,,,,,,,,,
- , ,-
,..
.--,
.