ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DON'T FEEL sorry for the people born on Feb. 29. They have their share of birthday celebrations, and maybe a little more.
Every four years, Nancy Hietala gets a big party. In the other years, she merely has to decide whether to acknowledge her birthday on Feb. 28 or March 1, and which restaurants with free birthday meal offers she can hit two nights in a row.
Being a Leap Day baby is "kind of fun," she said.
It never gave her any problem, except for the time the old boyfriend just didn't understand.
The guy wanted to do something special for her birthday to make up with her, but he said he couldn't remember the date.
It's Feb. 29, she told him.
But since it wasn't one of those years that had a Feb. 29, the fellow took her answer as a message to bug off.
And that was OK, said Hietala, an engineer at General Electric Co., just before she set out Thursday evening for a surprise birthday celebration at Sgt. Pepper's British Pub. She learned about the party from a newspaper ad Thursday featuring her picture and "real" age, 9.
Leap Day was first added in 46 B.C. with the adoption of the Julian calendar, which assumed a year of 3651/4 days (pretty close to Earth's orbital period of 365.2422 days). It also gave people born on the added day more options than the rest of us.
For instance, in years when there's no 29th, Matt Campbell just celebrates his birthday all week. But Thursday night, Campbell, a Virginia Tech sophomore, came home to Roanoke for a real event in honor of his fifth, uh, 20th, birthday.
The flexibility should be good news for the six babies who arrived Thursday at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley.
Rhonda Lawrence said her son, Benjamin Ronald Lawrence, who is her first child, will be even more special because he arrived on the 29th.
Lawrence and her husband, Ronald Gerald Lawrence, have decided to "round" Benjamin's birthday up to March 1 in the off years since he was born at 1:08 p.m., on the downside of the 29th.
Newborn Randy Austin Hicks, born at 1:46 p.m., also will celebrate on March 1, because that's his mother's birthday.
"I was almost a Leap baby," said Tracy Hicks, who was born in 1972.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Enjoying her "ninth" birthday,by CNBNancy Hietala, a General Electric engineer, parties Thursday at Sgt.
Pepper's British Pub.