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Community Corner

'Leapers' Look Forward to Special Birthday Next Year

Feb. 29, 2012 is Leap Year Day

What do actors Dinah Shore, Dennis Farina and Antonio Sabato Jr., all have in common?

They are all “leaplings,” or “leapers”— a person born on Feb. 29, which only comes around in years evenly divisible by four. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. (It’s a little complicated—has to do with being a corrective measure, as the earth does not orbit around the sun in exactly 365 days.)

Next year is a leap year, and Feb. 29, 2012 is Leap Year Day. According to www.leapyearday.com, some 200,000 people in America will celebrate their actual day of birth. (The correct terms are to say they were born in a Leap Year and on Leap Day.)

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Debbie Hollis, a former Farmington resident now living in Norwalk, was born at Danbury Hospital on Feb. 29, 1972, at 12:30 a.m. She celebrates her birthday on Feb. 28 when it’s not a Leap Year.

“I’m a February baby, not March,” she explained.

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The same goes for identical twins Alexis and Alyssa Bergamini of West Suffield, who were born at Saint Francis Hospital just after midnight on Feb. 29, 2000. Their parents Marcy and Vinnie decided to celebrate their birthdays on Feb. 28. Now that the girls are turning 11, they’ve made the same decision.

How does being a Leap Day baby make them feel?

The Bergamini twins “like the uniqueness of their day,” said their mother Marcy. “Kids all think it’s cool,” added Alexis, a fifth-grader at McAlister Intermediate School.

For New Haven native Phil Rosenfeld, being born on Leap Day has been “great fun.”

“My godmother, my mom's older sister, always ‘felt sorry’ for me, so I got great gifts on off years and wonderful gifts on real birthdays,” said Rosenfeld, who was born on Leap Day at Saint Raphael’s Hospital in 1952. His 12:45 a.m. birth was announced on the radio as the first of the Leap Day.

Ariel Langberg of Ridgefield was the first Leap Day baby born in Danbury Hospital on Feb. 29, 2004, according to her dad, Dr. Blaine Langberg.  At age 7, she’s a bit of a celebrity and tells a reporter that she’s been in the newspaper “lots of times.”

“I think I’m the only one in my school who was born on Leap Day,” said the Farmingville first-grader proudly, in a phone interview this week with her father. She celebrates non-Leap Year birthdays on Feb. 28, and is happy to share that day with her 97-year-old great-grandmother, born on Feb. 28.

Born on Feb. 29, 1988, just two minutes after midnight, Erik Schulwolf turns 23 this year and next year will turn six in leap years (and 24 in actual years).  He used to be “pretty sensitive about it as a kid. Now I appreciate how useful it is for playing Icebreaker games,” and added that it does make him feel “unique.”

“Everyone is pretty shocked when I tell them when I was born,” said Schulwolf, who is the son of Lisa Levy and Jim Schulwolf of West Hartford and now works as a paralegal in Washington, D.C. His mother said that when he was young, to make his birthday special, they would celebrate on both Feb. 28 and March 1.

A graduate of Solomon Schechter Day School in West Hartford, Schulwolf recalled being featured in his school’s newsletter as “The Smartest Two-Year-Old in the World,”  when he was actually a second-grader.

Rosenfeld said that when he attended Lyman Wheeler Beecher School in New Haven, he was one of three children with Leap Day birthdays, and there was a girl in school four years younger than them also with a Leap Day birthday.

Some “leapers” have had extra special birthday parties for Leap Year.

Debbie Hollis recalled one in which the theme was “I’m 8,” which was fun because she was 32.  

“I got all sorts of 8-year-old gifts,” she said.

Explaining the date

Many interviewed remember that they were about age 4 or 5 when they first became aware they had a special birthday.

Marcy Bergamini admitted that it was confusing for her twins when they were first learning to count. But at about age 5, “they got it,” she recalled.

Schulwolf’s mother Lisa said it was confusing for Erik when he was very young. By age 4, he understood when she told him of course he has a birthday each year, but his actual birth date  comes around only once every four years.

Langberg and his wife Rachel told their daughter Ariel that she has a birthday every year, “but it’s not on the calendar” every year. Once she was in kindergarten, she understood it, said her dad.

"Most people have birthday parties on Sundays and not on their actual birthdays anyway,” he pointed out.

 The “leapers” are all looking forward to 2012, when Feb. 29 rolls around again. Debbie Hollis will celebrate on both Feb. 28 and 29. “Why not?” she asked.

On the Leap Year Day Web site, the days are counting down. Today it says: “It’s just 365 days until Leap Year Day!”

Leap Day Babies by the Numbers

Odds of being born on Feb. 29: 1 in 1,461 or 684 in 1 million

Number of people in the U.S. who will celebrate a birthday on Feb. 29, 2012: 200,000

Number of people worldwide who will celebrate a birthday on Feb. 29, 2012: 4 million

Source: www.leapyearday.com

Leap Day Year Babies Honor Society

Google “Leap Day birthdays” and you’ll find the Web site www.leapyearday.com, a wealth of information about Leap Day year birthdays.

There is “The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, launched in 1997, for celebrating people born on Leap Year Day. If you are a Leap Day baby, you can join the thousands who have signed up to be members of the society and listed on the Honor Roll.

The site has links to a teacher’s page, parent’s page, and a Leapzine, where “Leap gear” is sold and Leap Year Day party-planning tips are available. There’s even a Leap Year Museum.

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