Published: Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 6:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 9:51 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 9:51 a.m.
It was Jan. 24, nearly three years ago.
"I had a funny feeling all day," says Gloria James. As senior community director for the local March of Dimes, she was overseeing the launch of the annual Walk for Babies campaign that day.
She knew her daughter, Mandy Dickey, was pregnant, but she wasn't due for another seven weeks. James says she got a call that night from her son-in-law, Scott Dickey — "they were at the hospital."
That's when she learned the news. In the midst of planning the launch for the local Walk for Babies, which raises funds to aid in the prevention of premature births and birth defects, she discovered her own grandson had been born prematurely.
Because he was born too premature for Munroe Regional to handle, James says, Tanner James Dickey was transferred to Shands Hospital at the University of Florida. He spent 12 days in the newborn intensive care unit before coming back to Munroe.
"His mother is a nurse, did everything right," James says of her daughter.
"For 50 percent of prematurity we know the answers," she said, ready to offer those answers if you ask. "We've got to find the answers for the other 50 percent. The babies are our future."
Today, Tanner is indistinguishable from any other 2½-year-old. His Fisher Price trains grab his attention way more than any early morning visitor.
But the research that helped develop Tanner's treatments may have had roots in his grandmother's work: For about 20 years, Gloria James has been overseeing local March of Dimes volunteer fundraising efforts.
On her watch, more than $6 million has been raised — earning her the nickname, "the $6 million woman." She's being honored Oct. 21 as the 14th recipient of the annual In Honor of Excellence award at a retirement banquet in her honor at the Holiday Inn Ocala Conference Center.
James scoffs at the $6 million sobriquet. "I never stopped to think how much was raised, only what we were raising." She says it's the volunteers over the years who really brought in the dollars.
James won the heart of her co-community director, Amanda Barnard.
"I have had the distinct privilege of working with Gloria for the past two years at the March of Dimes," Barnard says. "During this time, I have come to consider Gloria as not just a colleague but also as a close friend and role model. Gloria didn't just ‘come to work' every day. She came to share the love of Christ with each and every friend of the March of Dimes.
"We're just the coaches, the cheerleaders on the sidelines," Barnard adds. "I'm sure that's what Gloria would say."
Close. "I didn't do it, the volunteers did it all," James says. "I just gave them ideas. They beat the bushes, held car washes. They're the ones with the passion."
Ideas like the Chocolate Affair, says Pamela Stafford, herself a prior recipient of the In Honor of Excellence award. "Of course, it was back before counting calories was so important, but who could resist wall-to wall chocolate?
"Gloria always was a huge cheerleader for the cause," Stafford adds. "In her own, very gracious Southern way she could get people to volunteer before they even knew they had."
Marion County Clerk of the Court David Ellspermann, who's been one of her community advisers for March of Dimes, also offers praise: "There are a lot of people in the community who've made a difference, and Gloria is just part of that community. It'll be difficult to replace someone with that kind of impact on the community."
His feelings are personal. James, he says, early on established a relationship with Munroe Regional, which later opened its own newborn intensive care unit.
"My own twin grandsons stayed here because of the NICU here," Ellspermann adds.
She also was instrumental in establishing Light Up Ocala, which has become an annual holiday tradition for this city. Owner of her family's Whaley's Office Supplies on the downtown square, she saw that Orlando had done something similar.
"I suggested it to Scotty Andrews (city manager at the time) and he said if I could get some sponsorship, to go for it," James says. That was in 1982. Currently, Light Up Ocala is one of the biggest single events on Marion County's calendar.
"We were trying to do things to bring people downtown," she adds. "And for some families, this was their only outlet for Christmas."
A fourth-generation daughter of Marion County, James initially joined the local March of Dimes staff in 1991 as a part-timer. "We'd closed our office supply store and I was looking for something else," James says. "I saw this tiny little ad from the March of Dimes. I called, interviewed and was hired."
Initially, it was "just a job" but soon morphed into a calling.
A cause begins:
The March of Dimes was born amid the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938 urged the youth of America to send their dimes to the White House in the effort to eliminate polio.
When the White House was overwhelmed by the response, comedian Eddie Cantor reportedly quipped, "The dimes are marching to Washington." And a movement had gained a name.
Of course, everyone was terrified of polio way back then, and even children dutifully collected every dime they could get to send off to Washington. Dime by dime, they were making a difference.
In 1948, with March of Dimes funding, Dr. Jonas Salk began developing a polio vaccine; in the 1950s, it was standard to receive the immunization shot at school. In 1962, Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral polio vaccine; many, perhaps, recall taking the pinkish vaccine on a sugar cube. It offered permanent immunity to polio – and helped eradicate the virus from the United States.
The World Health Organization reports polio is nearly eradicated worldwide as well. So far this year, there have been 673 confirmed cases, nearly 500 of them in Tajikistan.
"We're still the only health organization that's met its original goal," James says, the pride obvious.
Focus changes:
But as polio faded as a national health concern, a rising incidence in premature births in the United States, along with preventing birth defects and low birth weights, became the organization's new focus.
Some half a million babies — one in eight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are born prematurely every year. The CDC defines premature birth as any before 37 weeks. Full term is 40 weeks.
"The rate has risen 33 percent since 1981," James says, though the National Center for Health Statistics reports that the rate declined slightly in 2008 for the second year in a row. It stood at 12.3 percent, down from 12.8 percent in 2006 and 12.7 percent in 2007.
"The rate is still too high," the study's lead author, Dr. Joyce A. Martin, told The New York Times earlier this year. "But the suggestion that the trend is going down is a hopeful sign." Still, the rate was higher than in any year between 1981 and 2002.
Florida's rate in 2007 was 13.8 percent, according to the March of Dimes website. Marion County's rate the same year was 13.1 percent of live births.
But the quest soon will go on without the $6 million woman at the helm of local fundraising efforts. James is looking forward to enjoying retirement with her husband, Bob, and doesn't know yet what she'll do beyond spending more time with Tanner.
"This is a wonderful privilege to be recognized like this," she says. "But I just did my job.
"I didn't do anything more than what was expected."
Contact Rick Allen at rick.allen@starbanner.com.
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