Blind Spokanite selected as 1975 March of Dimes poster child reflects on lessons learned over the life since

Aside from Bing Crosby, few Spokanites have shaken hands with more dignitaries, politicians, athletes and celebrities than Jamie Weaver.

At 9, Weaver was a few months into a whirlwind tour of America’s major cities, and fresh off a meeting with first lady Betty Ford, this time 50 years ago.

“Vivacious and friendly, this petite freckle-faced lass has proved that she is equally at home having tea at the White House with Mrs. Gerald Ford, or sitting beside her favorite singer, John Denver, humming a little tune,” a reporter wrote in an April 1975 article in The Spokesman-Review.

The 1975 poster child for the March of Dimes grew to be a bit of a celebrity during her time in the role, well outside the boundaries of the Inland Northwest. Weaver, born without eyes, was selected to raise awareness for the nonprofit’s mission to improve the health of mothers and babies, mostly by happenstance, she said.

Her mother, Brenda Weaver, was a local hairdresser, and was speaking with a client one day about her daughter and her birth defect.

“It works both ways: You tell your hairdresser everything, but, also, your hairdresser tells you a lot of things,” Jamie said.

That client was a local volunteer for the March of Dimes, and after explaining the organization’s mission, she recruited the Weavers to assist in the effort as Spokane’s poster child. It wasn’t long before she was selected to be the organization’s national representative, an experience she credits largely with shaping her into the woman she is today.

“I feel like a lot of the strength I have, and the ambition, the courage, come from my time in 1974 and from my work with the March of Dimes,” Jamie said.

Brenda would agree, adding that traveling across the country, speaking and singing to large crowds, and seeing the opportunities available to Jamie taught her daughter how to interact with adults, navigate new cultures and cities and become an excellent public speaker.

“It gave her a sense of confidence, and she wasn’t as afraid as she might have been,” Brenda said. “I tried really hard not to be a helicopter mom. You know, it’s hard when you have a special needs child to not be a helicopter parent.”

She remembers the journeys the two of them shared quite fondly, and rattled off a laundry list of landmarks, events and notable figures they visited along the way, including more than 65 senators, boxer Mohammad Ali, golfer Arnold Palmer, TV personality Lawrence Welk, actress Angela Lansbury and President Jimmy Carter.

“We were really proud to be representatives of that organization and spread the word about,” Brenda said. “I think Jamie was able to show all these people that she met that being blind is sort of an inconvenience and it makes life harder, but it doesn’t mean you have to be in a closet.”

Jamie, 59, is now an associate professor of musicology at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where she’s taught since receiving a doctorate in music history from the University of Oregon 18 years ago.

Music has always been a love of Jamie’s as an individual who experiences the world ears-first, she said, but her tastes nowadays have evolved into studying Baroque operas, 17th- and 18th-century Italian vocal music, and the composers from the Second Viennese School, a distinguished era in Austrian music. She credits her time as a poster child, and the fascination for differing accents in other parts of the country, for her knack for dissecting foreign compositions.

“Learning those different patterns of speech around the country made me develop my ears so that I could then learn languages, which I’ve enjoyed doing,” Jamie said, noting that she speaks Italian, German, Spanish “and French, if I absolutely must.”

Last spring, Jamie returned to her alma mater to give a commencement speech, and to be honored as the university’s 2024 School of Music and Dance distinguished alum.

Jamie said the distinction is among the proudest moments of her career, which she’s spent providing students with the same support, guidance and lessons she received while attending higher ed. She said she’ll often catch herself parroting advice passed on to her by her own professors when she was a doctoral candidate.

“The people and my experience at the University of Oregon are so dear to me, and they’re especially dear to me because what I found there was just a lot of acceptance,” Jamie said, “whereas prior, I had had a lot of rejection.”

“ ‘Well, I know you want to do this, but really, I just, I just don’t think you can. I mean, it’s not that you’re a bad person. It’s just that you’re blind, you know?’ ” Jamie recalled hearing as a child. “I felt like I was often held back, or that I had to fight a lot for what I got.”

She experienced the opposite at UO, she said. Instead of being greeted with skepticism or denials, her professors were encouraging and pushed her to pursue opportunities or take on tasks that she didn’t have faith she could.

“The place where you do a doctorate, a Ph.D., is so formative,” Jamie said. “It’s the place where you learn to be a teacher of other teachers, and someone who does good research as a scholar. I was very honored that they gave me a plaque in braille, and I still have it on my desk because sometimes I just like to look at it.”

Jamie said she’ll also occasionally browse some of her other keepsakes from her time as a March of Dimes representative, including the Raggedy Anne doll gifted to her by the first lady in Dec. 1974. She recalled how nervous her mother was ahead of that meeting, as they’d only learned they’d be meeting Ford three days in advance, after they arrived in Washington D.C.

The surprise just about sent Brenda, then a 27-year-old mother, into a panic attack, Jamie said. Young Jamie had just come down with a cold, her mother had not brought anything to wear for tea with the First Lady, they did not bring a gift for Ford and there was no good shopping near their hotel to address any of the aforementioned issues.

“She just said, ‘We’re in a mess,’ ” Jamie said.

With the tea party at the White House fast approaching, the Weavers decided to go for a walk near the hotel and came across a family-owned pharmacy, where Brenda was able to find Nyquil for her daughter, a can of red Play-Doh and a spool of ribbon.

“She bought all those things, sat me down at the table in the hotel room and said, ‘Can you make a bell? Take this red Play Doh and form the shape of a bell; you collect bells, you can make a bell,’ ” Jamie said.

After forming the bell and handle, and stringing a ribbon through the center so it could hang as an ornament, Jamie and her mother used a pen to give the base a frilled edge. Brenda Weaver stuck it in the Nyquil box, and wrapped it, taking special care to tape the paper to the box to ensure Ford couldn’t see the cardboard’s prior life.

“And then, of course, we got to security at the White House and the first thing they did was take the package and run it through security,” Jamie said. “I know my mom was all flustered because she was so afraid that the first lady was going to see that we had wrapped this present in a Nyquil box.”

Ford didn’t notice, or if she did, she was kind enough not to mention, Jamie said. The two exchanged gifts, and Jamie recited poetry and plucked out a few notes on the White House piano, then made Ford erupt with laughter – leading to an iconic image of the first lady snapped as Jamie delivered the punchline.

“The joke was: ‘What do you do if Santa gets stuck in your chimney?’ And the punchline was: ‘You use Santa-flush,’ ” Jamie said, referencing a since-discontinued toilet bowl cleaner named Sani Flush.

Ford left the meeting calling Jamie “really talented in a lot of fields,” and urging “everyone to contribute as much as they possibly can to this great cause to help children who have birth defects,” as reported by The Spokesman-Review Dec. 12, 1974.

Jamie said the first lady’s takeaways were exactly what she sought to instill in those she interacted with as a poster child. She hoped to change perceptions, inspire others and help the March of Dimes continue its work.

“I grew to understand my role as someone whose job was to teach the idea that a person with a birth defect could still be a person with dignity and who could accomplish good and do well in the world, to show people that they could have confidence in us,” Jamie said. “But also to help people understand that it would be better if these people who could do good in the world and who had options in the world, could do that good and have those options without the birth defect.”

The organization has since phased out the phrase “poster child” in favor of “National Ambassador,” but the March of Dimes continues to share the real experiences of mothers and children throughout the country as part of fundraising efforts to support its advocacy work, research, support programs and services.

As for Jamie and her mother, the two now live together in Texas and return to Spokane occasionally to visit family.

“I miss Spokane, I love Spokane, but we’re down here now where we’re together, and we get to enjoy each other’s company and so forth,” Brenda said. “And that’s fun.”

Jamie said she’s grateful for the time spent with her mom then, and now, and how assisting the March of Dimes as a child spring boarded her into success later in life.

“As you can see, it made me a person who doesn’t have any trouble talking or expressing myself,” Jamie said. “It gave me a knowledge of the world, a knowledge of differences in people, and reactions that I might expect from people, and ways of talking to and communicating with adults who all had different ideas, even though I was 8 and 9 years old.”

“I’ve appreciated all of that, and I feel like it stood me in good stead,” she added.