Read Wineke's blog at www.madison.com/wsj/blogs.

Over the years, I've had the opportunity to interview hundreds, perhaps thousands, of successful men and women.

I almost always ask the same question: What is it in your life that made the difference? What caused you to end up where you are now, rather than someplace else.

My favorite answer came from a very successful Madison businessman, who spent a few minutes extolling the virtues of hard work and can-do attitude and, then, asked "you do know that I married the owner's daughter, don't you?"

Most often, however, the answer I get is some variation of this: "Well, there was this teacher. . ."

There was this teacher who convinced me that mathematics could be fun. There was this teacher who took the time to help me repair my car. There was this teacher who dug into her own pocket when she observed that I couldn't see the blackboard and bought me a pair of glasses.

In my own case, the teacher was Dorothy Enloe. Dorothy ‑‑ her name was Dorothy Miller when I was her student at Verona Union Free High School in the 1950s ‑‑ taught English and composition and she had this strange idea that I could be a writer.

I was pretty full of myself in those days (not everything improves with age, I fear) and Dorothy kept trying to convince me to be a little less arrogant, a little more compassionate, a little less self-absorbed.

I had great potential, she kept telling me. All I had to do was apply myself a bit. As I approached my 60s and she approached her 80s, she finally gave up on the potential bit, but she always told me she was a fan of my writing.

When Dorothy was my teacher, my highest aspiration was to be a butcher at Miller's Supermarket, where I worked as a part-time butcher, peon, with a guy named Swede Henderson. I'm not so sure being a newspaper reporter is a higher calling than that, but it sure is easier on the back.

Dorothy Enloe died last Tuesday at age 90. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. today at Salem United Church of Christ in Verona.

I will miss her. She made all the difference in my life.

You, no doubt, have your own teacher, or school social worker, or coach, to thank. These are the men and women who always go the extra mile and, sometimes, we don't thank them or even realize how important they were to us until years after we leave their classrooms.

It was for that reason that Youth Services, a charity connected to the Wisconsin State Journal, decided recently to use its endowment funds to support our teachers. Interest from the endowment, which amounts to an estimated $33,000 a year at current rates, will be distributed through the Greater Madison Community Foundation to the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools and to community schools in our general circulation area to be used by teachers to help the impoverished children in their care.

This money will be helpful to many, many children and will, we hope, ease financial burdens on teachers who now purchase things like school supplies from their own pockets. More important, however, is that it will be a continuing vote of confidence and of gratitude toward our teachers, the men and women who, so often, make all the difference.