Elaine Whitelaw; March of Dimes Fund-Raiser

Elaine Whitelaw, 77, for five decades the chief fund-raiser and a major force for the March of Dimes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who founded the March of Dimes as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, asked her to join the group’s national women’s committee in 1943. Miss Whitelaw, credited as one of the nation’s first fund-raisers to realize the potential of middle-class donors, created a network of volunteers who sought donations in cinemas and door to door. She made the March of Dimes, which turned its attention to birth defects after polio was conquered, one of the country’s most successful charities. Dr. Jonas Salk, whose vaccine made the eradication of polio possible, said “her influence was all pervasive.” In Manhattan on Tuesday of cancer.