A most important interview is about to begin, so Jamie Brazzell gets ready in the room in Louisville where, in the next hour, it may be determined if the grinning, skinny 7-year-old will spend 1986 a minor celebrity or a regular 3d-grade guy.
”Honey,” Denise Brazzell beckons to her son, ”why don`t you come back near this table and parallel park.”
Jamie, who is paralyzed from the neck down because of spinal cord injuries, flips on his electric wheelchair with his chin, grabs the rubber reverse knob between his teeth and whizzes backward into a comfortable spot just as his interviewer walks in.
She is Sandi Gordon, director of communications for the National Easter Seal Society, based in Chicago, and she is searching for the 1986 National Easter Seal Child.
For the candidates, one of whom is Jamie, the stakes are enormous. Consider that the national child will receive more exposure than many fashion models and actors:
Thirty million stamps bearing the child`s picture will be distributed;
25,000 posters will be issued; enormous billboards will pose beside highways across the country. And about 50 million people will watch as the child chats with celebrities on the annual Easter Seals telethon, which this year will be televised from 10 p.m. Saturday until 6 p.m. Sunday (WGN-Ch. 9) and will feature 1985`s national child, Danielle Newman of Alsip.
The winner will meet President Reagan in the Oval Office; sleep in countless hotel rooms; attend meetings and eat chicken dinners in a dozen states around the nation; smile tirelessly for photographers; stay up late;
miss weeks of school; make television spots; and, as the center of attention, greet innumerable conventioneers at endless events hosted by Easter Seals sponsors who want to see where their money is going.
”It`s still a funny feeling when we pass a bus stop and suddenly there`s a poster of Danielle,” says Diane Sibley, mother of the 7-year-old child with spinabifida, who chatted with President and Mrs. Reagan a few weeks ago.
The hunt for the `86 child began in January when Easter Seals offices around the nation sent in resumes of their nominees. For a national child to be selected from their region is a plum, so local Easter Seals officials eagerly dispatched files filled with testimonials, glowing reports of progress made at local Easter Seals centers and even videotapes. Gordon narrowed the field to three children for face-to-face interviews–in Connecticut, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
”This is going to be very difficult,” she says with a sigh as the final interviews begins. ”And no matter what we do, two of the kids are going to be so disappointed.”
— — —
In the Easter Seals office in Louisville, Denise Brazzell whispers to her son to stop yawning. The day before, they drove north for 4 1/2 hours from their home in tiny, southwest Mayfield. She holds a cup of water to his mouth so he can drink. A sticker on his wheelchair proclaims, ”Why Be Normal?”
As she talks with Jamie, Gordon is carefully gauging how the child interacts with strangers, whether he is shy or outgoing. She takes the candidates out to lunch to check how they handle themselves in public. She quizzes them on practical matters, such as their willingness to take naps. Would they do their schoolwork on the road? How do they present themselves?
Can Jamie, for instance, articulate what Easter Seals–which provided him therapy since he was 14 months old–has done for him? This, after all, is the topic the national child and his parents will be asked to address in public, over and over again through the year of his or her tenure.
”Well,” says Jamie, who appeared on his first telethon when he was 18 months old, ”they`ve helped me to get stronger in my arms–Mommy has too, though. Oh, and at (Easter Seals) camp we go swimming. This year we didn`t swim very much because it was a rainy season and we had a flash flood and there was a lot of puddles.”
His mother adds more poignancy to the child`s plain answer: ”I owe Easter Seals Jamie`s life . . . Jamie, don`t chew on your (wheelchair)
controls.”
No one except Jamie`s mother thought there was anything wrong with him when he was born. Some said he was merely ”a content baby” because he was breast-fed. By the time he was 6 months old and motionless on his back, though, Denise Brazzell knew her son had a serious problem. He was retarded, she and her husband were told. Only when he was 5 were the spinal cord injuries–suffered at birth–discovered and Jamie`s permanent quadriplegia established. Tests indicate that Jamie is of above average intelligence.
Gordon asks Jamie why he wants to be the national child.
”I`d get to meet a lot of famous people, hopefully Mr. T.,” he says excitedly. ”It doesn`t matter what I`d have to do as long as I stay at a hotel with a pool. And I think being chosen might show what Easter Seals can do for people like me. They can help people like me a lot.”
Jamie has never walked or thrown a ball, although he loves sports, he tells Gordon. When he says he makes ceramics at camp, he means he chooses the colors. When he says he loves to swim, he means his mother holds him in the water. So when Gordon asks what he would wish for if he could have three wishes, some obvious things flicker through the minds of other people in the office.
Jamie thinks for a long moment.
”I think I would go see Japan,” he says. ”My second one . . . I don`t know . . . would be that Sandra, the girl I love, would love me. I can`t think of another one.”
Later, at an Easter Seals luncheon in downtown Louisville–one of many functions Jamie has attended as a former Kentucky Easter Seals child–his mother sings a song she composed years ago. Jamie joins faintly in the chorus. ”Mommy, do angels ride ponies?
”Mommy, do angels play ball?
”Mommy, when I get to heaven, then can I do them all?”
As soon as the song is over, though, Denise Brazzell firmly tells the group:
”I don`t want you to think that heaven is the place Jamie needs to be to make his dreams come true because it is not.”
As Gordon leaves the luncheon, Jamie glides up beside her.
”There are only two other kids against me, right?” he asks. ”I hope it`s me.”
— — —
At his suburban home near Phildadelphia, 10-year-old candidate Timmy Kinniry, who has cerebral palsy, has already told his friends, ”I`m going to meet the President.” He tells Gordon he hopes he can visit Mexico and Japan
–two places not on the Easter Seals itinerary but vivid in the boy`s imagination–and adds that he wants the job so he can ”fly all over the place and get away from school.”
Donna Kinniry, his mother, rolls her eyes. ”If you don`t hang us, Tim. . . .”
”Sometimes you have to sit around through some very yucky stuff,”
Gordon reminds Tim. ”It can be very boring. Sometimes the people all around you will think that since you have a disability everything you do is just fantastic and you`ll think, `Hey, I`m just a kid.`
”Also,” Gordon says, ”you have to be prepared for insensitive questions–rude ones. It can happen at any event, anywhere.”
— — —
For sure, the job is not all glamor.
”It gets hard at times because it`s difficult for Danielle to be always so happy and smiling. She`s just a normal 7-year-old,” says Diane Sibley, now in the fourth month of her daughter`s tenure. ”It`s nice, Danielle is enjoying it a lot, and we`re having a wonderful year, but it is a lot of work. ”Also, once Danielle comes home, she`s not a poster child to us. People are constantly telling her she`s a star. She said that since she is, we should move to Hollywood. I have to break the news to her that she`s not, that when she`s home (in between appearances) she`s not in a hotel room anymore and that she has to fix her bed and clean her room.”
Years ago Easter Seals routinely used cherubic, able-bodied models on its stamps rather than genuinely disabled ones. Showing real disabilities would turn people off, it was felt. Past seals also showed handicapped children tossing away crutches in manufactured triumph.
John Kemp, Easter Seals` director of human resources who was the Easter Seals child in 1960, remembers:
”They didn`t use me on the stamp and my job was mostly to say `thank you` and those kinds of things; they didn`t give me too many speaking parts. They never showed me as a child who could express himself. It was supposed to be strictly visual–so visual that they even had me wear Bermuda shorts over my artificial legs, which I never do.”
”I am not looking for the stereotypical `cute crippled kid,` ” Gordon says about this year`s search. ”I`m looking for someone upon whom Easter Seals has made an impact, a child who has received a lot of services from us. I want a child other disabled kids can look at and feel good about. Someone who is poised and reasonably articulate. I also need to make sure that he or she can get around, and that he has a successful school experience–because he will miss a lot of it. The child also needs a very strong family support system.
”Last year, for instance, we interviewed a great boy but the father wouldn`t sit through the interviews. I don`t want to rip a family apart by having the child out traveling.”
The child can`t be hyperactive or too nervous; the job involves too much tedious sitting at luncheon and dinner tables–and being stared at–for that. Looks, Gordon insists, aren`t important. She will discard applications from children who are photogenic but inarticulate or withdrawn. She wants the national child to represent the disabled as just plain people, not superheroes or victims. Still, fundraising is crucial, and the national child must be endearing and charismatic enough to cause people to reach into their pockets. ”We`re not trying to generate a sympathetic response, but a positive one,” says John Garrison, executive director of the National Easter Seal Society.
— — —
As soon as Gordon walks into Susie Wilcox`s house in West Simsbury, Conn., the little girl, who has spina bifida and a yellow belt in karate, twirls around in her wheelchair and inquires:
”Do you like my new earrings?”
She has been home from the hospital for one day. A few weeks earlier she was operated on for the 20th time in her 9 years. Born with a hole in her spine, she was nonetheless able to stand up and walk when she was 18 months old. A freak compression of her spinal cord when she was 2 1/2 left her a quadriplegic, although she has limited use of her arms.
She says she really wants the job. Really.
”I just hope I get chosen because I have to see the President sometime in my life,” she explains.
As Gordon explains the rush of responsibilities to her mother, Susie sits in her wheelchair in the middle of the living room whispering to herself in prayer. ”Oh, please, God, pick me, let me get it, please, please, please. And please let me meet John Denver.”
Asked what she thinks the national child should be, Susie launches quickly into a speech. She is talking off the top of her head but also, clearly, from her heart.
”The child needs a lot of spunk and determination,” she says earnestly. Now cannily: ”Mostly the child needs what I`ve got–the qualities I am going to name. You need a very happy child. A sad child may not be picked.”
Years ago, Susie was chosen as poster child for another health agency. The people at the photo shoot wanted her to look sad and tearful; they thought the public would be more likely to send in donations with such a strategy. It took hours to get Susie to pose that way, her mother says, but the group succeeded finally when Susie started crying from exasperation.
Now the girl ticks off more qualities on her fingers.
”You need a sociable child and a very talkative child, not a shy child. And a person that`s not scared to meet someone else. So far I`ve named six qualities and I have these qualities.
”One more thing,” she says quickly. ”You need a very tough child. That person must have a lot of comedy, a good sense of humor. You don`t want to have an ugly kid to put on a poster, do you? She has to be nice, not mean and grabby, like `This is my toy.` ”
She`s not through.
”That person must have nice table manners, TV manners and newspaper manners–you must speak to the important people nicely. And you also need a child with good interests. The person must be smart. You don`t want a dumb person in a poster, do you? I have one more thing to put on your list. A very active child. You don`t want a dull child on your poster, do you? And these people must know the times tables, but I only know one of them: 9 times 9 equals 81.”
”Well,” Gordon says. ”What`s your weakness?”
”That I can`t walk.”
”Does that make you a less better person?”
Susie thinks for a second.
”Kind of. I don`t know.”
A few days later, Susie relays a message back to Gordon, now home in Chicago. She has thought of another ”quality,” she says.
”The national child must be faithful and true.”
Gordon says can`t stop thinking about the choices. Can I choose two kids, she wonders? It would be a first. The decision will be made sometime in the next few weeks as she meets with Garrison and other staff members and reviews each child, but official announcements will come in November at the national Easter Seals convention.
”One child I interviewed said you have to be tough to be chosen national child,” Gordon recalls. ”I think you also have to be tough to be part of the team that makes the choice. And this is agonizing.”
