Donna Halper lends Rush a helping hand on the Walk of Fame

                                                 Geddy, Donna, and Alex

When Canadian rockers Rush get a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame Friday, Donna Halper will be there. And well she should be. Halper, who teaches at Lesley University in Cambridge, is widely credited with breaking the band in the US when she was the music director at Cleveland's WMMS-FM in 1974. To its credit, Rush - bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart - never forgot Halper's help and invited her to introduce them at the ceremony in LA. (The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan also will be there at the band's request.) "I've been in broadcasting for close to 40 years, and they're one of the few people who've kept in touch," Halper told us yesterday. "They've made some money and lost some hair, but they're the same people today they were then....For once, the good guys win." Halper, who makes an appearance in the new documentary, "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage," says it's a shame the power trio is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. "Critics have a lot of contempt for Rush, for reasons I don't understand," said the Dorchester native. "People say they're a cult band - they're a thinking person's cult band...I got an email from a bishop who's a Rush fan - a bishop!"