Seventy years ago today

The Legal Genealogist is simply astonished by this photograph.

Oh, it’s a truly sweet image, no doubt about that.

I mean, what’s not to like about an incredibly smug older sister getting to hold her newborn brother for the very first time ever?

Yes, actually, that’s me — the smug dirty-faced not-quite four-year-old.

And that’s my brother Paul I’m holding.

And I remember every single detail of the day he was born.

Seventy years ago today.

It was a Monday, that 28th day of February, 1955.

My older sister Diana and I were awakened early by our father. Dressed in neat little dresses with what were likely saddle shoes, taken next door to the house where Bailey and Peg Pepper lived and given into Mrs. Pepper’s care.

Given breakfast. Sent out to play in the backyard. Given lunch. Sent out to play again in the backyard. Waiting for the news that we wanted. I mean, we each had a sister already. We wanted a brother.

And then the back door of the Pepper house banged open.

Mrs. Pepper came running out into the yard. “Girls,” she called. “Girls, you have a baby brother!”

Just a few days later, they brought him home from what was then Middlesex General Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. All nine pounds, 15 ounces, of little blond boy with a little butch haircut.¹

And I got to sit outside on the front steps with that very smug look on my face (and — no surprise — a dirty face), and hold my brother for the very first time.

Now some folks say I was awfully young to have such a vivid memory of that day. But there’s a detail I remember that nobody else in the family does. It’s that we weren’t wearing coats that day. Despite it being only February in New Jersey, we were wearing sweaters to play outside. Nobody else remembered what the weather was like that day. But I remember wearing only a sweater.

So, yes, of course, being a good genealogist, I checked.

“March is coming in like a lamb tomorrow–” reported the Trenton Evening Times of 28 February 1955, “and February is going out the same way. The temperature climbe(d) to a Spring-like 61 degrees by mid-afternoon today and was expected to reach a high of 62.”²

Sweater weather.

It’s really true.

I really do remember something that happened seventy years ago.

Seventy years ago today.

Happy birthday, Paul.

This “getting older” bit isn’t so bad, after all.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “About this getting older bit…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 28 Feb 2025).

SOURCES