A big kid with a big voice growing up in Phillipsburg, N.J., in the 1950s, Don Winkler loved singing in church. Unfortunately, he would peer into his hymnal and belt out the wrong words. Instead of "Praise God," he might sing "Praise dog." Or "Paris to the Lord." Everybody "thought I was a cutup," says Winkler.

He wasn't. And he wasn't slow or lazy either, as some may have suspected. Winkler, now 52 and CEO of Ford Motor Credit Company, had--and still has--a learning disability. He is one of the many successful Americans who have struggled with and ultimately overcome dyslexia or an allied affliction such as attention deficit disorder. Experts say that of the estimated 54 million students who returned to classrooms this fall, as many as 15 percent may have learning disabilities. Though school can be an ordeal, these children are often very bright. It's just that "the wiring of their brains is different," says Sally L. Smith, founder of the Lab School in Washington, D.C., and a pioneer in teaching the learning disabled. And quite a few should go on to fulfill great dreams, as did such corporate titans as Winkler, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers and uberbroker Charles Schwab--dyslexics all. Many great achievers see their supposed handicap as a spur. "It's a blessing in a way, if you can overcome it," says novelist Fannie Flagg, one of six success stories we profile on the following pages.

Paul Orfalea Kinko's plucky founder

What saved a curly-haired boy nicknamed Kinko from despair was his own cockiness and a mother and father who refused to accept his teachers' insistence that their son was as dumb as a stone. "Without my parents," says Paul Orfalea, 52, "I'd be a skid row bum right now." Try millionaire's row: Orfalea--whose undiagnosed dyslexia led to his having to repeat grades, expulsions and a stint in a school for retarded children--was smart enough to coax the small Santa Barbara, Calif., copy shop he started in 1970 at an old hamburger stand into Kinko's international chain of more than 1,100 stores. Not bad for a kid who could barely read and who well remembers the day a junior high school administrator told his mother, Virginia (now deceased), "Maybe he could enroll in a good trade school and learn to lay carpet." Still, he managed to scrape through high school, he says, with a low D average, and then navigate through the University of Southern California with a similar lack of distinction. Orfalea stepped down this year as Kinko's chairman and still lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, Natalie, 44, and scouts for new business opportunities. His hard-won advice to fellow dyslexics is simple: "God gave you an advantage. So work with your strengths."

Fannie Flagg A fan letter opened her eyes

It was a TV viewer who in 1978 unearthed the problem Fannie Flagg had kept from the world--and herself--for 35 years. Flagg, 57, the bestselling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Broadway star of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, was then appearing on the quiz show Match Game. She would misspell words she had to write out as part of the game, making jokes to disguise the fact that she could no more spell than fly. One day Flagg got a letter from the viewer, a teacher. "You do so well, even though you have dyslexia," she wrote. Flagg was flabbergasted. "I thought, 'What is that?'" she says. "I got tested, and it turns out that I was severely dyslexic and had ADD [attention deficit disorder]. I just thought I was dumb."

As a child, Flagg wanted to write but despaired when teacher after teacher told her a bad speller could never become a novelist. Yet one did say to Flagg, "You're very good at talking," and that single remark gave the sixth grader wings to act and write. "She helped me feel I wasn't so bad," says Flagg, who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is writing her fifth novel. "People call it--and I always laugh--'the gift of dyslexia,'" she adds. "I don't know if it's a gift, but it is a character builder."

Tom Gray From obnoxious to Oxford

His oral discussion of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche helped him win a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship last December. Little did the esteemed nominating committee know, however, that Tom Gray couldn't write the philosopher's name legibly, never mind spell it. That's because the 23-year-old College Park, Md., native has dysgraphia, a disorder characterized by disorganization, terrible handwriting and an inability to spell. "I wanted to present myself with no handicaps, no bump-ups," says Gray of his decision to keep mum about his disability. "There's always a fear that you'll be judged more harshly for that."

He should know. Though articulate and a precocious reader, Gray, the only child of a retired lobbyist and a former high school guidance counselor, could not draw letters or simple stick figures in third grade. "My teachers thought I was either lazy or lacked academic ability, and it created a vicious circle," says Gray, who compensated by becoming a class clown and bully. "It made you want to act out even more, brag more, constantly shout to the heavens, 'I am smart, I am a good person.'"

A turning point came in high school, when a psychotherapist finally diagnosed Gray with dysgraphia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Since then, with the help of Ritalin and understanding parents and teachers, he has gone on to become a National Merit Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College. "You can't understand light until you understand darkness," says Gray, who this fall began his Rhodes studies at Oxford. "The hardest experiences I've ever faced have given me the greatest strength."

Ann Bancroft Inspired by an adventure story

As a young girl, polar explorer Ann Bancroft was enthralled by Endurance, the story of Ernest Shackleton's heroic 1914 Antarctic expedition. Not even her dyslexia, diagnosed in seventh grade, could quell her dreams of crossing the frozen continent herself. School was a torment, says Bancroft, 45, but it was her disability, ultimately, that forged her iron will. "It's given me strength," she says. "I feel lucky, and I couldn't say that as a child."

Now the first woman to cross the ice to both the North and South Poles starts out on her dream journey. In early November she and Norwegian explorer Liv Arnesen, 47, plan to take off from northern Antarctica's Queen Maud Land in hope of becoming the first women to ski across the continent--covering 2,400 miles in about 100 days, pulling sleds, each carrying 250 lbs. of supplies (including 50 lbs. of high-fat potato chips to help maintain their weight and energy).

For her first polar expedition in 1986, the former gym teacher from Scandia, Minn., kept her dyslexia to herself. This time she will broadcast it online to grade school students in 38 countries-- teaching them, as they track her journey, to follow their hearts. "I get to talk about being crummy at math and I still get to navigate," jokes Bancroft, adding that counting fingers works "just fine, as long as I don't freeze them!" Talking to some learning disabled kids 14 years ago at the Lab School of Washington (D.C.) was an epiphany. "'What am I ashamed of?'" she recalls asking herself. "These were fantastic, brilliant, exciting people. I decided to give it voice."

Charles Schwab He read the comics

Charles Schwab runs one of the world's most successful brokerage firms but doesn't like talking about his dyslexia. "This stuff is a giant stigma," says Schwab, 63. "I only do it because I'm hopeful that other people will recognize it in their children and get some help." In fact, it was not until one of his five children (whose privacy he wishes to preserve) was diagnosed as dyslexic in the 1980s that Schwab learned the reason he, too, had struggled with words all his life. "It was like deja vu," he says.

Ever since, Schwab has made raising awareness of learning differences his mission. In 1988, he and his wife, Helen, 55, founded the Schwab Foundation for Learning, now endowed with $280 million in assets, to provide parents with practical information and strategies on everything from diagnosing at-risk children to preserving a child's self-esteem. Schwab favors the term "learning differences" over "disabilities" because it is more inclusive. He lobbies for greater understanding of the variety of such differences, insisting, "Not all kids fit the same cookie cutter."

He certainly didn't. The son of an assistant district attorney and a homemaker, Chuck Schwab grew up near Sacramento and struggled with reading and memorization in school. As a teen, he says, he depended on classic comic books for his literary education. But his deficit caught up with him in the 1950s at Stanford University, where he says he was admitted, despite low SAT scores, on the strength of his golf game. He was soon flunking English. "It was pretty devastating," he recalls.

Schwab didn't dwell on his shortcomings. Instead, he gave rein to a thinking style he says allows him to conceptualize ideas quickly and make creative leaps that more sequential thinkers don't. In 1974, a few years after starting Charles Schwab Co.--now worth $35 billion- -he turned Wall Street upside down by discounting commissions. Without diverse thinking styles like Schwab's, "the world wouldn't have some innovations it has," says Alexa Cortes Culwell, executive director of the Schwab Foundation. "He's living proof of that."

Troy Brown Still running against the odds

Delivering a commencement address at tiny Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss., in 1990, comedian Bill Cosby, who had just been awarded an honorary humanities doctorate, suddenly threw the audience a curve. "Where's the young man who drove us here?" he said, scanning the auditorium for the 27-year-old alumnus who had chauffeured him to the ceremony. When the young man, then a master's candidate at a nearby university, made his way onstage, Cosby gave him a surprising introduction. "Troy Brown is dyslexic," he announced. Then, knowing that Brown was planning to pursue a doctoral degree, he handed him the ceremonial purple-and-white stole he had just received and said, "I want Troy to wear mine along with his."

Brown was stunned. Aware that the performer's son Ennis also suffered from dyslexia, he had disclosed his disability to Cosby only that afternoon. "All the way up through college I'd kept this secret," says Brown. "And this guy had just told the whole world!" Since then Brown, now 37, has gone on to become a university dean of student affairs and a major figure in Mississippi politics. But he has never forgotten the humiliations of his childhood in Rockford, Ill., where he, his parents and younger brother settled after migrating north from Mississippi in 1971. There, classmates called him "Troy Brown, the dumbest boy in town," and he was ashamed of having been placed in a special-education class. "People kind of snickered," he recalls today. But at home his mother, Edna, now 69 and a retired teacher (his father, Harold, died in 1982), tutored her son. "Every night he would go to bed with a stack of books," she remembers, "and try to read them until he fell asleep." In high school Brown compensated for low grades by becoming a varsity linebacker, only to see his college dreams dashed by injury. The day before he was set to enlist in the Army, his Baptist minister persuaded him to enroll instead at Rust, where a professor soon diagnosed Brown's dyslexia. "That was one of the happiest days of my life," he says. "I finally knew that what was wrong with me had a name."

Brown labored through his undergraduate and master's programs. "What may take the average person an hour took me two and a half," he says. But now married to wife Curressia, 33, a law and business professor, and the father of Troy Jr., 10, Brandice, 6, and Khari, 2, he plans to take his doctoral exam in education next month. November will mark another milestone: the general election in which he's running for the U.S. Senate as Mississippi's Democratic candidate against incumbent Trent Lott, the Majority Leader. Brown is well aware that the odds against him are terribly long but remains undaunted. "My life has always been an uphill struggle," he says, "and this is just the latest in a long line of struggles."

Writers: Christina Cheakalos, Bruce Frankel, William Plummer, Susan Schindehette Reported by: Alice Jackson Baughn in Itta Bena, Miss., Lorna Grisby in Dearborn, Mich., J. Todd Foster in College Park, Margaret Nelson in Minneapolis, Edmund Newton in Ventura, Calif., Lyndon Stambler in Los Angeles.