Irving Fradkin, who sent millions to school with Dollars for Scholars, dies at 95

Irving Fradkin, an optometrist who in 1958 began collecting $1 donations to help send local high schoolers to college and whose efforts grew into a charity called Dollars for Scholars that has distributed $3.5 billion to more than 2.2 million students in the United States, died Nov. 19 at his home in Fall River, Mass. He was 95.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Russell Fradkin.

A son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Fradkin traced his activism to his gratitude for the opportunities that he and his family had received in the United States. His father, a baker, had helped finance Fradkin’s education. When he became an optometrist, Fradkin often asked his young patients about their aspirations.

He was disheartened to hear how many of them did not plan to attend college, or who wished to enroll but could not afford the tuition. In his town, Fall River, which had suffered economically with the decline of the textile industry, only 3 percent of residents were college graduates, according to a Time magazine report in 1961. Nearly 40 percent did not complete grammar school.

In 1957, Fradkin ran for the School Committee of Fall River Public Schools, proposing efforts to help high school students afford college. He lost that campaign — a disappointment not only to him, it turned out, but also to some local students who said they needed his help.

“Dr. Fradkin,” he recalled a young man remarking, “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am you lost the election. I was counting on you and your scholarship program to help me get through college.”

Fradkin set out to achieve his goal without the advantages of elective office. He calculated that if everyone in Fall River contributed $1 to a fund, the town could collectively help its graduating seniors pursue postsecondary education. The effort became the Citizens’ Scholarship Fund of Greater Fall River.

The first $1 contribution, Fradkin said, came from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he had contacted to request her support. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, alerted to the initiative, commended it as the necessary groundwork for democracy.

Remarking on the generosity of his community, Fradkin recalled elderly residents who subsisted on public assistance but still made 25-cent contributions, promising to deliver the rest in installments. A truck driver contributed, Fradkin told the Jewish Advocate, because he said he wanted “somebody to get a better job than I did.”

In the first year, Fradkin secured money for 24 scholarships ranging from $100 to $300. The next year, those scholarships were renewed and two dozen more extended. In 1960, the group raised $17,000 — $14,000 of that in $1 donations, The Washington Post reported at the time — to support 70 youngsters.

The recipients, chosen based on criteria including their financial need and grades, were encouraged to repay the loans, interest-free, when they could.

“So many young people have dreams but no money,” Fradkin once said, according to South Coast Today of New Bedford, Mass. “College is so expensive today that it’s a rich man’s game. That’s a danger to America. The downfall of America will be because kids can’t afford college — that’s a crime and a shame.”

Irving Fradkin was born in Chelsea, Mass., on March 28, 1921. He later gave himself the middle initial A., standing for Anything, his son said.