What a Bicentennial Baby Knows

Thirteen seconds after midnight on July 4, 1976, Karen Steele was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and was anointed the first “bicentennial baby.” Newspaper articles followed. President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, sent a note to the family. And then it kind of became a thing. Any baby born that year was treated like they had emerged playing the fife and drums. In Mobile, Alabama, new mothers received a commemorative blanket. In Covington, Louisiana, a hospital handed out (for $2.50) special “bicentennial baby” certificates on faux parchment, a “memento that can be framed and cherished as a family heirloom for endless generations.”