Girl to Be Honored for Service

When Woodland Hills resident Dina Springer was 3 years old, she made such an impression on the producers of a national United Cerebral Palsy telethon during a walk-on appearance that they kept asking her to come back.

Over the next 10 years, Springer’s open face and broad smile appeared on thousands of posters nationwide, often with actor John Ritter, the national host for United Cerebral Palsy. “The cameramen just fell in love with her,” said her mother, Annette Springer. “She had that long, cutesie look; her hair was in pigtails. They just ate it up.”

Sunday, she will be honored on local and national television for 10 years of volunteer service to United Cerebral Palsy, the only theme child to have appeared in all 10 of its national telethons. The organization will present Dina with a photo album and show a video highlighting her life from early childhood to her bat mitzvah in June.

It won’t be the first time Dina has appeared in a movie. In 1982, she appeared in “Marian Rose White,” a CBS Movie of the Week, playing a girl with cerebral palsy who slowly learns to speak.

Dina also has appeared in an episode of CBS’ “Knot’s Landing,” an Easter Seals commercial, in a joint ad campaign of United Cerebral Palsy and Schlitz Brewing Co., and in the Huntington Park Christmas Day Parade, and she has done local television interviews, her parents say.

“I like expressing my feelings,” said Dina Springer. On appearing in front of a television camera broadcasting nationally, she said: “It used to be scary, but I got so used to it, it doesn’t faze me anymore.”

Cerebral palsy is a disorder of the central nervous system, generally caused by brain damage during birth. Dina said that, after she was born, she was unable to breathe for 20 minutes. Amazingly, she suffered no mental retardation, her parents said.

Now, Dina, who does not have complete control of the left side of her body, attends Hale Junior High School and uses a special lap-top computer and printer attached to her wheelchair for schoolwork. She operates the computer with her thumb.

“We’ve watched her grow up,” said Dr. Ronald Cohen, executive director of United Cerebral Palsy in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. “We’ve just seen her develop and it’s special. She’s a wonderful kid.”