Jerry Lewis honored as Member of the Order of Australia on Labor Day weekend

Jerry Lewis was honored as a Member of the Order of Australia

Jerry Lewis was honored as a Member of the Order of Australia, the highest award bestowed on a civilian by that country.

Jerry Lewis, 88, received a gold medal, a lapel pin and a high volume of praise from the Australian officials who made the trip to honor the comedian for his work in fundraising for the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation (MDF).

Jerry Lewis was honored as a Member of the Order of Australia (photo Getty Images)

He has toured Australia and raised several millions of dollars for MDF. The Aussie charity is not formally linked to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), with whom Jerry Lewis raised more than $2 billion in a 45-year philanthropic partnership.

The Jerry Lewis-MDA relationship fractured after the 2010 MDA Labor Day Telethon at South Point, when, over a course of months, it became evident that Lewis was being cut loose from the annual telethon and organization. What’s left of what was long a 21 1/2-hour entertainment odyssey is this year’s MDA Show of Strength variety show, which aired for two hours on August 31, on ABC.

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Kathryn R. Bown

Kathryn - Our health specialist likes to share with the readers the latest news from the field. Nobody understands better than her the relation between healthy mind and healthy body.