When Annie Anthony was born in Lowndes County on Feb. 29, 1936, her family did not go to the hospital.
Instead, Anthony said, they brought a midwife home and paid her with chickens.
As much as the family welcomed the baby, not everyone appreciated the birth date. Her grandmother, Anthony recalled, was “having a fit.”
“My grandmother … changed my birthday to (February) 28th,” Anthony said. “Because, she said, ‘You ain’t gonna have no birthday.'”
But Anthony knows when she should really celebrate. Although she still celebrated annually, every four years on Leap Day, she said, she would look forward to receiving something big.
“It’s special. I have to wait four years to be that old,” she said. “I’m looking for more.”
And this year, Anthony’s just turning 21.
Young and special
Old photos bring back memories of a young Anthony as she looked through pictures from when she was 18 or 19.
“I was a little fox,” she said, chuckling.
Sometimes, Anthony said, she does feel like a 21-year-old — or perhaps someone much younger.
“This is what I tell my kids sometimes,” Anthony said. “When I woke up this morning, every four years, I say, I was feeling so young I thought I’d get up and catch a school bus.”
And as she watched her children’s hair turn gray, Anthony teased them.
“I’ll tell them, ‘You look older than I do,'” she said.
For J.T. Frazier, a Mississippi State University graduate born on Leap Day in 1992, his birthday was something he took advantage of when his elementary school classmates made fun of him about it.
“They say, ‘Well, you are a little baby,'” Frazier said. “I looked at all of my friends that were making fun of me and I said, ‘You know, when you are 100 one day I’ll only be 25.'”
Frazier, who is celebrating his seventh birthday this year, came to his family as a “miracle” when his parents thought they would never have a baby after years of frustrating attempts.
His mother, Melonie Frazier, was considered at high risk when she gave birth to him at age 38. Prior to her pregnancy, she said, she had suffered a series of female health issues.
“When we gave up and just threw up our hands and quit trying,” she said, “that’s when I conceived.”
J.T.’s due date fell on Feb. 29, Melonie said, and he was punctual. Still, the hours-long labor stretched into late that night, she said, when the doctor offered to delay the process to skip Leap Day.
“I said, ‘Nope,'” Melonie recalled with a laugh. “We’ve been doing this all day long and I’m ready to have this baby.”
John Frazier, J.T.’s father, said “a million things” crossed his mind when his only son was born 28 years ago. The hospital gave him a scrub shirt with his son’s footprint inked to the front pocket on the day he was born, he said, and the shirt is still tucked in his drawer.
Since the day J.T. was born, Melonie said, “It has been nothing but joy.”
“I think it was just meant to be,” she said. “I think he was a gift from God.”
‘He took really good care of us’
Unlike J.T. Frazier, who came to the world right on time, Ava Jacobs was late. She was born in Tupelo 12 years ago, days after her due date, said Ava’s mother, Brenda Jacobs. Her doctor at the time, Clay Hudson, performed an emergency C-section to deliver the baby.
“At the last minute,” Jacobs said, “(Ava) decided to do a little Leap Year twist.”
The “twist” developed further when Jacobs was surprisingly reunited with Hudson in Columbus as she moved for her new job at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, where Hudson happens to work. The two had been out of touch for eight years, she said.
“He took really good care of us,” Jacobs said. “I found him back down here, so now he’s taking care of me again.”
Hudson still remembers the day he delivered Ava, Jacobs said, and he asks about Ava often.
“He gets tickled when he sees her,” she said. “He said (the day she was born) kind of just sticks in your mind.”
For this year’s Leap Day, Jacobs said, Ava prepared a stuffed frog as a gift to Hudson.
“She wants him to have that to remember her by,” she said.
Celebrating the leap
Whenever it’s Ava’s real birthday, family members take the day off to gather for the occasion, Jacobs said.
“She expects everybody to be available that fourth year (on Leap Day),” Jacobs said. “She says, ‘So you just go ahead and make that schedule for me so that we can be together.'”
For this year’s Leap Day celebration, the family is preparing her a three-tier cake and having a cookout at home, Jacobs said. Family and friends are also invited to surprise her.
For J.T. Frazier, the most unforgettable celebration he had was the crawfish boil for his fifth Leap Day birthday.
Frazier and his friends bought live crawfish from Little Dooey’s and boiled them in a 20-gallon pot filled with water, onions, mushrooms, sausages and other ingredients. The secret touch, he said, was to throw in some oranges to enrich the flavor.
“They were probably the best crawfish I’ve ever had,” Frazier said.
This year, Frazier will have a quiet family reunion in Birmingham, Alabama with his mother and wife.
“My favorite celebration is cooking and spending time with my family,” he said.
That rings true for Anthony as well. She lives alone in Crawford, and she said most of her children are spread around the country.
For her 77th birthday (which did not fall on a Leap Year), Anthony said, her daughter invited relatives from across the states to surprise her. As memories started to come back of that special moment in 2013, she suddenly teared up.
“It was special to me because my daughter, my kids did so much for me,” Anthony said. “Just the little things they do.”
Some of those little things, though, prove to be pretty big.
Anthony’s late husband, who passed away when she was 55 years old, had promised to take her to the ocean. However, she had still not gone before he died.
Instead, not long after her husband passed away, her eldest son took up the mantle on his father’s behalf.
“He surprised me by taking me to see the ocean,” she said. “That was so special to me because I’d never seen the ocean before.”
This year, Anthony’s only wish is for her children and grandchildren to gather beside her again.
“I believe if we can all get together,” she said, “and we just spend some time together … that would mean more to me.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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