The odds of being born on Leap Day are 1 in 1,461 – the number of days in four years. The city chose Feb. 29 to incorporate, giving Worcester a leap-year birthday. Here, the Worcester Guardian talks with Worcester people who deal with the anomaly
WORCESTER—Noreen Simon is about to celebrate her birthday for the 17th time only, but she’s already married with three children and eight grandchildren, and she runs her own business.
John Griffin is a retired Worcester firefighter with three children and a granddaughter. His sweet sixteenth birthday is approaching.
Belinda Thomollari is married with two daughters and she also runs her own business. She’ll turn 11 soon.
This might take a leap of faith to believe, but it’s true. All three were born on Leap Day. Simon will turn 68 on Feb. 29, but the Worcester woman will celebrate on her actual birthday for only the 17th time. Griffin, who grew up in Worcester and now lives in Rutland, will be 64, or 16 in Leap Day age. Thomollari, also of Worcester, will turn 44, but will celebrate her birthday on Feb. 29 for only the 11th time.
“On my Leap Year, I am proud to say I’m going to be 17,” Simon said. “Seventeen times I’ve seen my date on the calendar in my entire life. That’s it.”
“It’s exciting,” Thomollari said. “It’s magical. It’s kind of like having a unicorn for a birthday. It’s fun.”
“I think it’s unique,” Griffin said. “It’s fun. I kid people that it’s a Leap Year so I celebrate my birthday the whole year.”
Griffin gets a kick out of sharing a birthday with Worcester, which was born, or incorporated, as a city on Feb. 29, 1848.
The odds of being born on Leap Day are 1 in 1,461 – the number of days in four years. According to popsugar.com, an estimated five million people worldwide have that birthday. In the U.S., the total is about 187,000, less than the population of Worcester.
Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who started in the NBA All-Star Game this month, was born on Feb. 29, 2000. Over the years, other famous people born on Feb. 29 include the late singer Dinah Shore and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
Earth rotates the sun in 365 days, five hours, and nearly 49 minutes. Without adding a Leap Day, our calendar would lose close to a day every four years.
Simon, who designs jewelry and sells it online, admitted she wasn’t always thrilled about being born on Feb. 29.
“As a kid, I wasn’t too fond of it because I knew it was different,” she said, “and that everybody’s date was on the calendar and mine wasn’t.”
While growing up, she celebrated her birthday in non-Leap Years on Feb. 15, her brother’s birthday.
“My Mum would add me to his cake,” she said. “It would say, ‘Happy Birthday, Gerry and Nonnie.’”
Simon was excited to turn 16 – her fourth birthday on Feb. 29 – and she still remembers the birthday card her favorite aunt gave her. It had a hippo in a pink tutu and read: “Let’s shout, let’s cheer. Your birthday is here. Happy Birthday, 4-year-old.”
When she and her husband Billy took their oldest child to Disney World years ago, she showed her license and tried to pay the youth price for herself.
“That didn’t fly,” she said. “It’s the happiest place on earth, but no.”
Her youngest child, Chrissy, actually celebrated her 10th real birthday in 1995 before her mother did.
Simon said the most common question she’s asked about being born on Feb. 29 is when she celebrates her birthday in non-Leap Years, Feb. 28 or March 1.
“I always answer that I was born in February so I celebrate on the 28th,” she said.
So what is it like celebrating her birthday on a date that’s not actually her birthday?
“I feel like I’m pretending,” she said. “I go through the motions like, ‘Yeah, it’s my birthday,’ but it’s not my birthday really.”
Since she was young, she has written the number 29 and her name on the calendar in the blank square after Feb. 28.
Simon is one of 11,000 members of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies on Facebook.
There is some sadness attached to Simon’s birthday. In 2012, her newborn grandchild, Sophie, was admitted to the hospital in critical condition with a rare kidney disease on Feb. 29. Fortunately, she’s doing well today, but Simon still remembers that scare on her Leap Day birthdays.
Simon has never met anyone else who was born on Feb. 29.
“I’ve only met only one other Noreen in my life too,” she said. “So it’s not a good batting average.”
Simon and her husband met when they were both 16 – a Leap Year – and they’ve been together ever since. They’ve been married for 48 years.
“I was 4 and three-quarters when we got married and he took a lot of ribbing for being a cradle robber,” she said.
Thomollari is a research coordinator at Reliant Medical Group and an artist who sells her paintings at belindathomollari.com. She’s known for her paintings of owls and other birds. She’s played the number 29 in the lottery and has considered incorporating it in her artist company name.
Thomollari pointed out that she could drive a car at age 4-½, her Leap Day age, and that her oldest daughter, Miranda, 12, is excited to be older than her.
On the rare occasion when Thomollari has to discipline Miranda, her daughter gives her a hard time because she’s older than her mother. Thomollari and her husband, Orest, have another daughter, 9-year-old Amelia. The daughters get a kick out of their mother being a Leap Day baby.
“They think it’s the greatest thing ever,” Thomollari said. “So they’re excited to celebrate and the older they get the more excited they get about it.”
When does Thomollari celebrate her birthday in non-Leap Years?
“That’s a dilemma in my family,” she said. “Growing up, my parents could never decide. My dad believed it was the last day in February and my mom thought it was the day after the 28th. So I got to pick and I usually picked the day that was closer to or on the weekend.”
For three out of every four years, Leap Day babies cannot celebrate their birthdays on their actual birthdays. So when Feb. 29 rolls along after a four-year wait, Thomollari feels special.
“It’s so exciting,” Thomollari said. “It’s like four Christmases in one.”
Thomollari plans to have 11 candles on her birthday cake this month. Each Leap Year, she uses the number of candles equal to her Leap Year birthday, not her actual age.
Thomollari’s best friend has already sent her an 11-year-old birthday card.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s the greatest. I feel like I’m aging slowly.”
Griffin came into the world at 11:45 p.m., the last of 18 Leap Day babies born in Worcester’s four hospitals on Feb. 29, 1960, according to a Worcester Telegram article that his grandmother saved.
One of those other 17 Leap Day babies went on to work with him in the Worcester Fire Department and two others attended St. Peter-Marian High School with him. He had lost touch with his former high school classmates, but last fall one of them, Angela Giorgio, recognized him while waiting on him at Joey’s Bar & Grill and they reminisced.
Another fond connection to his high school days was receiving a Leap Day birthday card from his freshman year through 2016 from Sister Joan Pollack, one of his teachers at St. Peter-Marian.
One of four children of a Worcester firefighter and a stay-at-home mother, Griffin said his family used to rotate his birthday celebration in non-Leap Years between Feb. 28 and March 1.
“Whatever was closer to pay day,” he recalled.
He expects to have candles with the numbers 1 and 6 on his birthday cake and he jokes he won’t be able to celebrate with a drink because he’ll be only 16, but that he’ll finally be old enough to get his driver’s license.
Griffin and his partner, Deb Bocchino, live in Rutland. Bocchino’s daughter, Gabriella Boyle, turned 16 last year and told Griffin, “I’m older than you and you’ll never catch me.”
When Griffin wrote his birth date on a loan application, an employee at the credit union told him that “there’s no Feb. 29.” Griffin had to correct her.
Does Griffin consider himself to be 16 or 64?
“The way I act—16,” he said with a chuckle, “and people will attest to that.”
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com
