On August 11, 2014, Robin Williams handed away at 63 after a two-year battle with Lewy Physique Dementia.
However his legacy extends far past his passing.
After skyrocketing to fame within the Nineteen Seventies comedy scene, Williams leapt from stage to display screen and captivated audiences with roles in “Hook” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992), “Good Will Looking” (1997), and numerous extra.
Nevertheless, his most important position was off-screen, as a notable humanitarian and philanthropist.
As a comic, actor, and beloved public determine, he proved simply how a lot one particular person can contact thousands and thousands of lives by means of laughter, heat, and radical acts of kindness. Listed here are a couple of examples of Williams’s do-good efforts that stay an integral a part of his legacy right now.
He helped increase over $80 million for folks experiencing homelessness.
Impressed by “Reside Help,” Comedian Aid USA was created to fight the sharp rise of homelessness in America within the 1980’s.
With the steerage of comic Bob Zmuda, Williams joined Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg in main the trouble.
“After we began [Comic Relief], we had to determine what could be an appropriate trigger,” Zmuda informed the Los Angeles Instances. “No person was extra adamant than Robin that it ought to assist the homeless.”
On March 29, 1986, Williams, Crystal, and Goldberg hosted a three-hour tv occasion on HBO for the inaugural Comedian Aid — and the donations poured in.
Via stand-up acts, sketches, stunts, songs — and a historic lineup of comedians — Comedian Aid continued on yearly till its ultimate HBO broadcast in 2010.
Throughout 24 years, the profit raised and distributed over $80 million to folks in disaster.
He was the face of St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital for a decade.
Of all of his charitable contributions, Williams is probably finest identified for his work with St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital.
Over the course of a decade, he filmed a number of commercials for the nonprofit — and by no means charged a dime for his appearances or time.
“Mr. Williams generously gave his time to lift consciousness and funds for St. Jude and for our sufferers battling childhood most cancers,” the hospital stated in an announcement in 2014.
“His humor introduced shiny smiles and laughter to our sufferers and households and his generosity deeply touched the hearts of all who knew him.
His daughter Zelda Williams additionally labored with the muse to create the “St. Jude PLAY LIVE” charity program in 2014.
In a gaming livestream, Zelda raised over $9,000 for the group — the identical week that she misplaced her father.
After the outpouring of help, Zelda tweeted: “Thanks to all these donating to @StJude in reminiscence of my father. I am overwhelmed. The charity meant the world to him, because it does to me.”
Williams went above and past for army veterans.
Following within the footsteps of comedic legend Bob Hope, Williams labored prominently with the United Service Organizations.
In keeping with TIME, Williams traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, and 11 extra international locations all through the Center East, and carried out for 90,000 troops throughout six USO excursions.
“From entertaining 1000’s of service women and men in struggle zones, to his philanthropy that helped veterans scuffling with hidden wounds of struggle, he was a loyal and compassionate advocate for all who serve this nation in uniform,” Protection Secretary Chuck Hagel stated in an announcement after Williams handed.
Lisa Jakub — who performed Williams’ daughter Lydia in “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) — found later in life that her on-screen dad usually employed veterans to work on movie productions.
“He all the time had manufacturing crews rent native veterans to be background actors or issues like that on set, which isn’t one thing I ever knew about once I labored with him,” Jakub shared this yr.
“Robin was the whole lot you’ll hope Robin could be, and it’s so fantastic to suppose again on him now.”
He fought for human rights alongside Amnesty Worldwide.
When Williams handed in 2014, the crew at Amnesty Worldwide made a put up memorializing his work with the worldwide human rights group.
Within the put up, they quoted the W.B. Yeats poem “The Stolen Little one” — the identical poem Williams’ character Dr. Know recites within the 2001 movie “AI.”
The poem reads: “Come away, O’ human little one! / To the waters and the wild: / With a faery, hand in hand / For the world’s extra stuffed with weeping / than you may perceive.”
The put up went on to say that though “the world was certainly stuffed with weeping,” Williams devoted his artwork and advocacy to creating “the world a greater place.”
Williams started working with Amnesty Worldwide by starring in a number of commercials and headlining the Chicago leg of their Conspiracy for Hope Live performance in 1986. He continued to work with the group for the rest of his life, serving to to lift funds for folks fleeing struggle, catastrophe, and tyranny.
“We mourn his passing however his artwork will stay on and his contribution to our motion and the reason for human rights won’t be forgotten,” the group’s employees wrote in 2014.
His job contracts quietly employed individuals who have been unhoused.
Brian Lord, president of Premiere Audio system Bureau in Tennessee, by no means started working immediately with Williams.
However at one level he reportedly “received shut sufficient” that the actor’s workplace despatched over a contract rider, which outlined Williams’ stipulations for employment.
“After I received Robin Williams’ rider, I used to be very shocked by what I discovered,” Lord wrote in a weblog put up in 2014.
“He truly had a requirement that, for each single occasion or movie he did, the corporate hiring him additionally needed to rent a sure variety of homeless folks and put them to work.”
After Lord found this new aspect of Williams’ character, he stated he “by no means watched a Robin Williams film the identical manner after that.”
“He was an ideal multiplier of his impression,” Lord added. “Let’s hope that impression lives on with out him. Thanks, Robin Williams — not only for laughs, but additionally for a cool instance.”
He did vital work for spinal twine damage analysis.
The Christopher & Dana Reeve Basis has been instrumental in elevating cash for spinal twine damage analysis and bettering the livelihood of 1000’s of individuals impacted by paralysis.
For Williams, his work with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Basis was private. He was roommates with Reeve at Julliard, and his friendship with the actor-director continued on for a lifetime.
In 2004 — the identical yr that Reeve sadly handed — Williams joined the board of administrators and went on to work with the muse for 4 years.
Past his work immediately on the board, Williams additionally hosted “two or three” galas and occasions for the group annually.
Peter Wilderotter, who served because the president and CEO of the muse for 18 years, stated that Williams was extremely beneficiant — each together with his time and his frequent donations.
“These weren’t token items,” Wilderotter informed CNN.
He supported 38 charities all through his life.
Along with his aforementioned charity work with St. Jude, Amnesty Worldwide, and extra, Williams supported a complete of 38 charitable organizations all through his life.
The lengthy record of charities and nonprofits embrace the American Basis for AIDS Analysis, Medical doctors With out Borders, UNICEF, Save The Kids, Malaria No Extra, and so many extra.
From well being care and training to environmental motion, Williams’s philanthropy touched so many various areas of the world in a wealth of the way.
On the coronary heart of all of it, Williams helped make the world brighter for everybody — no matter race, gender, earnings, and scenario.
And he did it not simply together with his time, his platform, and his cash; he did it together with his phrases.
As a comic, an creator, an actor and extra, he confirmed how radically you may reshape folks’s lives, merely with kindness and heat.
“It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you, phrases and concepts can change the world,” Williams says in “The Useless Poet’s Society” (1989).
“In the event you hear actual shut, you may hear them whisper their legacy to you.”
Header photographs through TSGT Vincent A. Parker (Public Area), John William Smith / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
