TV personality Amy Roloff speaks at local awards dinner
By JANE NORDBERG, DMG writerArticle Photos
TV personality Amy Roloff speaks at local awards dinner
By JANE NORDBERG
DMG Writer
HOUGHTON - Amy Roloff never imagined herself a television personality, a public speaker or an advocate for little people around the globe.
"I was shy, not a very vocal person, more of a team player who helped out but didn't ever really want to be in the lead or forefront," Roloff said Monday before a crowd of more than 200 gathered at the Best Western Franklin Square Inn in Houghton.
Roloff, the featured speaker at the Michigan Works Summer Youth Awards Dinner, said she hoped her remarks encouraged the young people in attendance to keep striving toward success no matter what obstacles might be in their path.
Roloff and her husband, Matt, live in Portland, Ore., where they and their four children operate a farm. The family is featured in the popular television show, "Little People, Big World," which chronicles the daily lives of Amy and Matt, who are dwarves.
"Everyone has challenges and opportunities," she said. "What makes people different is how they handle them and let them affect their attitude."
Roloff admitted her attitude hadn't always been the best. As an adolescent, she spent too much time thinking about being a little person, she said, and not enough time realizing what she could accomplish.
In her first year at Central Michigan University, she was astounded when her roommates didn't take any notice of her size. What almost got her kicked out of the room, she said, wasn't her size but her personality.
"Everything was always about me," she said. "I wasn't spending any time finding out about them, and they found me hard to live with."
She spent a lot of years feeling as if she was trapped in a box, unable to get out, she said. She obsessed over her clothing and outward appearance, convinced that if she presented herself well enough on the outside, people wouldn't notice her dwarfism.
"Well, that was just crazy," she said, reflecting on the teasing and discrimination she suffered throughout her life. "What I should have been doing was dealing with the inside package, not the outside, which I couldn't do anything about, anyway."
Roloff said she couldn't blame her parents, who were completely supportive despite her being the only dwarf in the family, and the lack of medical, emotional and financial resources available to them.
The home phone was placed at a normal height on a wall near the kitchen, she said. Every time it rang, Roloff had to drag a stool over to answer it. Her clothes were on an upper rack of a closet. When she hid under her bed, refusing to go to the first day of elementary school, her father left work to come home and reason with her.
"It would have been much easier for him to tell me I didn't have to go," she said. "But he knew I would have many worse challenges to face in my life than the first day of school, and I wouldn't be able to run away from them."
Some of those challenges were medical. Roloff and her son, Zach, are achondroplasic dwarves, while Matt is a diastrophic dwarf. There are more than 200 types of dwarfism, she said, each with its own set of medical concerns.
"One of the scariest days of my life was when Zach got sick with a respiratory virus at nine months old," Roloff said. "For his brother, it would have been just a bad cold, but because Zach's lungs were undeveloped, it was life-threatening."
Roloff and her husband are both active in Little People of America, a national organization begun in 1957 by actor Billy Barty. Roloff's passion is for scholarship programs so people like herself can pursue a college degree.
Their work with LPA caught the attention of the media, which led to the television show, now going into its fourth season. Roloff said she originally did not welcome the idea of a camera crew filming her daily life.
"Home is my sanctuary," she said, even though that home might not get the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
"You would not believe how many people comment on how messy my house is," she said. But like many criticisms, Roloff takes no notice.
"My main job is to raise my kids," she said. "I would rather they remember I was at their soccer practice than to know I stayed home to mop the kitchen floor."
As the seasons progressed, she became more comfortable with the camera crew and the attention the show has provided.
"I have learned to embrace and appreciate it," she said. "I think we've opened some people's eyes."
She has also become more comfortable off-screen in her own skin.
"I've figured out that you really have to know yourself before you can expect others to know and accept you," she said. "When you accept what you are given, you not only become more successful but you make others around you more successful as well."
For more information on Little People of America, go to www.lpaonline.org.
Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com
