‘I’m very SANE about how CRAZY I am’

Carrie Fisher’s most important role: As a self-aware and funny chronicler of her own struggles. “All of us, we thought, ‘We are so lucky, we have healthy children, and here is this mother with three sick children.’ We all said, ‘We have to help her.’”

Steve Dorfman

I was never a “Star Wars” fan.

Sure, I saw the original on opening day in 1977 — but was bored silly and spent the next four decades purposely avoiding every sequel.

Thus, no Princess Leiarelated boyhood fantasies for me. However, as an adult I was always a Carrie Fisher fan. Because of her caustic wit. Because of her brutally honest self-awareness.

And because of her forthright eloquence in describing her journeys with bipolar disorder and substance abuse.

It was Fisher’s self-admitted shortcomings that made her so enchanting.

This was a woman who not only owned her baggage, but was disarmingly open about letting others peek inside every uncomfortable nook and cranny.

As she once said, “Being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.”

And it turned out that, as alluring as Fisher may have been on celluloid, she was even more so on the written

continued on “Would you help me? “Would you help me save my sons?” It all started like that. Their 50-year friendship, the whole “65 Roses” global charity phenomenon — it all started with a simple request from a notso-simple mother, Mary Weiss.

“Would you help me?” Mary asked Baylie Rosenberg, another young mother whose children went to Palm Beach Day School with Mary’s boys in the 1960s.

Mary had just moved to Palm Beach from Canada with her three sons, Arthur, Richard and Anthony.

They all had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes persistent lung infections and makes it hard to breathe. CF should have killed them before they were 10.

And CF might have killed them so young. It might have — if Mary Weiss had not made it her life’s mission to find a cure.

Her first step: Ask Baylie for help.

Step two: Baylie asks another friend, Phyllis Hoffman.

Step three: They gather other friends and hold bake sales and teas. They clean out their closets to raise money. They start a fundraiser, a party, that got its name from Mary’s son Richard.

Richard heard his mother calling people night and day, explaining what CF is and pleading for donations. He was just 4, listening intently as Mary repeated “cystic fibrosis” over and over.

“I know what you’re working on, Mommy,” he told her. “You’re working on Sixty-Five Roses.”

The first Sixty-Five Roses gala

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COURTESY CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION At the height of his fame in the 1970s, Burt Reynolds helped Mary Weiss (right) raise money for cystic fibrosis research. The disease affects 30,000 children and young adults in America. In the ’70s, this little girl’s life expectancy was about 12....

ALLEN EYESTONE / THE PALM BEACH POST Mary Weiss was so close to Baylie Rosenberg (seated) and Joan Eigen that she called them her sisters. Along with Mary’s dear friend Phyllis Hoffman, they are co-chairs of the Sixty-Five Roses 50th Anniversary Benefit, Jan. 12 at The Breakers in Palm...

FOUNDATION CYSTIC FIBROSIS Richard, Arthur and Anthony were born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes thick mucus to build up in the lungs and pancreas. They were expected to survive to age 8, maybe 10. Their mother “loved them to the point of craziness,” she’d...

IMAGES KEVIN WINTER / GETTY Carrie Fisher.