When it came time to feature a New Year baby on its front page of early January 1971, the Journal must have taken into consideration that its ‘Golden Crecent' readership area extended beyond Lorain County.
Thus it highlighted the first baby of the New Year born in Lorain, Erie and Huron counties on page one of its January 2, 1971 edition.
The honor went to the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Holzmiller of Norwalk, who was born in Amherst Hospital at 1:06 am on New Year’s Day. A roll call of other area hospitals was included in the article, with St. Joe’s bringing up the rear with a baby girl born to a Strongsville couple at 2:48 p.m.
But what about the First Lorain Baby born at St. Joseph Hospital in 1971?
Ah, I guess we’ll never know who it was. The annual ‘First Baby’ winner page featured the first Lorain County baby, namely Darren Wayne, son of Mr. and Mrs. William Weber of Avon Lake.
Darren and his parents still received some nice prizes, but as you can see, the pickins’ got slimmer each year.
If I do this blog long enough, we’ll probably discover that the prize for some poor mid-1980’s First bébé was a free Whopper Junior and fries.
The Journal was apparently finding it harder and harder to sell the related ad space. Your brother was born at the right time, back when the prizes were more plentiful. I hope he is grateful.
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