Linda Myers turns 17 on Monday.
She got married when she was 5½ and recently celebrated her 46th anniversary to husband Bill.
Confused that the math isn’t adding up?
That’s what happens when you’re born on Feb. 29, that all elusive date that comes around once every four years. Milestones become garbled math problems divisible by four.
“This is great fun” for Myers, who has spent the past five winters in Tucson away from the bitter cold of home in Milwaukee. She has turned leap year into a hobby that some might say borders on mild obsession.
Starting in her early 20s, she has been collecting leap year memorabilia, including pins from the 1930s and ’40s, and penny postcards from 1904, 1908 and 1912. To date she has amassed 2,500 pieces of memorabilia.
“I have some paper money that was printed in leap year from Scotland dated Feb. 29, 1988,” she said. She also has leap year gaming chips from the Riviera Hotel.
Early this month she showed off her trinkets when she spoke to genealogy groups about what it’s like being a leap year baby. Myers, who marks her birthday with two leapling buddies, said some with the auspicious birthdate feel cheated that they only get a chance every four years to celebrate on the actual day they were born.
In some ways, Myers said, she feels privileged.
“The whole birthday thing is all about time. If the parents didn’t want their child to be born on Feb. 29, they would ask doctors to induce or change the birth certificate,” said Myers, who will celebrate 68 years on Monday. “But my parents let me be born on Feb. 29, and I’m thankful they did because I’ve had a great time with it. Four times the fun.”
Myers, the first of seven children in her family, grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. Her mom was a school teacher, and her dad was a salesman. Birthday celebrations were simple family affairs.
“If we got a Pepsi on New Year’s, that was a big deal. And once in a while we would have pizza out of a box,” she recalled.
Sometimes kids would make fun of her because of her leap year birthday.
“I would come home crying to my parents, and they would take care of those tears by saying, ‘Yes, you do have a birthday.’ They really made my birthday special,” she said.
Her most exciting birthday, she said, was when she turned 21. She and her friends went to a bar for that ceremonial first legal drink.
“But that year was not a leap year, so the bartender said, ‘You are not 21; we are not able to serve you,’ ” she recalled.
She had to wait until midnight, when the calendar flipped to March 1, to get that first legal drink.
Myers said she and her husband plan to eventually move to Tucson full time. Both are retired — he was a manufacturer’s rep and she worked in accounting administration for Wisconsin’s largest Re/Max agency.
Myers was not yet 16 when she retired.
You do the math.
