Friends and Partners by Rose David W.;

Author:Rose, David W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elsevier Science & Technology
Published: 2016-03-15T00:01:50+00:00

The March of Dimes boosted incoming mail of 8,000 daily letters into the range of 50,000 to 150,000 daily. If this stupendous interruption of White House mail communications seemed like a one-off event at the time, it was not, for the “march” of dimes to the president continued year after year during FDR’s tenure. Ira Smith stated, “After the first year, we made special preparations for the March of Dimes, taking on extra clerks in January and keeping them until we cleaned up the work in March.”15

In jump-starting NFIP fund-raising as they did, Cantor and the Lone Ranger capitalized on the President’s popularity and demonstrated the enormous practical value of an appeal for the inexpensive participation by everyone, young or old, rich or poor, simply by contributing a dime. Moreover, Cantor’s knack of hitting on a catch-phrase that would be universally remembered was a stroke of genius, for the name March of Dimes as the NFIP’s annual fund-raiser would soon become more widely recognized than the proper name of the foundation itself.16 Eddie Cantor’s radio appeal for dimes effectively circumvented O’Connor’s original strategy of enrolling half a million founder members by soliciting 500,000 single dollar donations by subscription, much like the Polio Crusaders had done at Warm Springs a few years before. The “Fight Infantile Paralysis Campaign,” styled as such by the new foundation, had opened with a radio broadcast in the Jade Room of the Waldorf Astoria on December 30, 1937, four scant days before the NFIP was officially organized. George M. Cohan (composer of two classics in the canon of American patriotic song, “Over There” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag”) was Master of Ceremonies, Dr. Max Peet offered a keynote address, and Basil O’Connor was the principal speaker. The New York Times published a lengthy article “National Attack Aims at Paralysis” by Paul de Kruif who explained how the NFIP would “utilize all the weapons of science” to battle polio. Women’s committees organized teas, benefit theatrical performances sold out, and even Helen Keller was enlisted in the drive. As an “aerial parade” of aircraft buzzed over Manhattan, young women sporting red, white, and blue sashes and portrayed as debutante “Musketeers” strolled through Grand Central Station, restaurants, department stores, and hotels collecting donations in return for a tiny button bearing the slogan “I’m Glad I’m Well.” Frederick Snite, a well-known polio survivor popularly called “the boiler kid” and “the man in the iron lung,” made a radio appeal from his iron lung respirator. This well-planned and auspicious beginning to the NFIP was then upstaged entirely by Eddie Cantor’s “March of Dimes” radio pitch in the final week of January as newspapers delighted in photos of postmen straining under the weight of mail bags laden with dimes at the White House. Eddie Cantor continued through the war years as Chairman of the “March of Dimes of the Air,” as the somber gravity of the NFIP gave rise to its public alter ego in the lively phenomenon of the March of Dimes.

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