“Yes, the first baby born in Lorain in 1972 is going to start off on the right bootee with plenty of booty!
That’s part of the clever copy found in the full-page First Baby Contest ad shown above, which ran in the Journal on New Year’s Eve, 1971 – back when the newspaper was still a Lorain paper.
I was fairly surprised to see that this contest – dating back to the 1950s – was still around in the early 1970s.
The contest rules were spelled out pretty well in the ad: the winning baby would be the first born after midnight, December 31st, in St. Joseph Hospital; the parents had to be residents of Lorain County; the tine of birth had to be certified by the attending physician.
The Journal would provide the gift certificates and be allowed to print the name of the winning baby (assuming it had a name) and its parents.
It’s odd that that although Lorain had two hospitals at that time, only St. Joseph Hospital was included in the contest.
For anyone looking back at them now, the roll call of the companies providing the goodies for the First Baby is kind of sad. All of the businesses are gone: Kmart, Mister S, Ontario, Januzzi’s, Gaylords, National Pharmacy and Jupiter Discount Store.
Anyway, I had to dig through several papers to find out the winner. Unlike previous winners, there was no front page photo of a mother clutching her newborn. Instead, the entire ad was run again on Monday, January 3rd, 1972 with the winner’s name – Lynn Ann Perrotto, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Nick Perrotto of Avon, Ohio – tucked into the ad next to the stork.
3 comments:
KMart,Ontario,Gaylords and Jupiter.Even St. Joe's is gone.Now all there is left is Amazon.Do you actually think that Jeff Bezos cares about any city having its first baby of the New Year?Nope,he's too busy floating around in outer space counting his billions of dollars of wealth while us customers fight over a piece of turkey in our cardboard box house.
Lorain Community Hospital never had a labor and delivery unit until it merged with St Joseph and the maternity unit was built onto the front of LCH in the 90's.
Well, that explains that – thanks, Bill!
Coincidentally, I noticed a few days ago that the MJ included a photo of the first baby born at Mercy in 2022.
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