First Baby of 1964

Well, I've already done posts on the First Babies of 1944 and 1954, so I'd better add 1964 to this baby bundle. The contest rules for the First Baby of 1964, however, were a little different from its predecessors. 

For one thing, both parents no longer had to be residents of Lorain; residency was now opened up to all of Lorain County. And unlike the 1954 rules which required that the baby be born within Lorain city limits, the 1964 rules stipulated that the winning baby must be born at Lorain St. Joseph Hospital. So no houses or cars.

Here's the full-page ad with all of the freebies for the winner. I think the ride home in an all-new 1964 Thunderbird from George May Ford is a pretty creative idea.

Seeing the stork illustration in the Michaels Studio ad got me wondering. Is the old myth about storks bringing babies still being perpetuated these days? Where would kids be exposed to it and would they even know what a stork was? As a kid, I was only familiar with the old tale from the animated cartoons that usually showed a drunken stork delivering the wrong baby with comical consequences

Anyway, Journal readers didn't have to wait very long to find out who the lucky tyke was. The January 2, 1964 edition revealed on the front page that Rita Godlewski, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Godlewski, had the honor.