You’ve never met anyone who loves leap day more than the Leap Day Lady.
From her home in Keizer, Raenell Dawn Ochampaugh, who goes by Raenell Dawn, manages a website and Facebook page for the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies. Every four years, she becomes the de facto spokesperson for people born on Feb. 29, speaking to reporters and connecting them with leap day babies across the globe.
“This time of year, I’m all about the leap,” she said.
Her office, aka “Leap Central,” is packed with leap day memorabilia and art. Nancy Lucas, a woman inspired by her granddaughter born on Feb. 29, has spent years creating leap-themed watercolor art, which Dawn has put on T-shirts, mugs and prints. The two woman designed a stuffed frog, named His Royal Leapness, that they’re hoping a toy manufacturer will reproduce. Dawn also has a collection of handmade leap day dolls, with a “2” and a “9” drawn into each eye.
“The catchphrase is, ‘The only doll with 29 eyes,’” Dawn said.
For some reason, it hasn’t caught on.
At her office crafting station, Dawn paints leap day rocks, with information about leap day on them, which she places at rest stops along the Willamette Valley. It’s her way of spreading leap day awareness.
Once upon a time, leap years and leap days were a bigger deal, particularly around the turn of the 20th century. Dawn’s collection includes vintage magazines, postcards and leap day Valentines that show at the time, folklore held leap year as a time for gender role reversals, when women could propose to men, and the men couldn’t refuse.
A Leap Year postcard from 1908 is part of the collection on leapyearday.comLeapyearday.com
In the Gregorian calendar, years that are evenly divisible by four are leap years of 366 days — except for centurial years, which are only leap years if they are evenly divisible by 400. The years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was one.
We have leap years because it takes about 365.2425 days for the earth to revolve around the sun. Without the occasional added day, the calendar would get out of sync with the seasons.
“It’s the most important date on the calendar,” Dawn said. “It represents balance and harmony, and I think people should use their extra day wisely and do something good with it.”
As the oldest of three girls born in February, Dawn jokes that she grew up with “empty box syndrome.”
“My mom would put our names on the calendar,” she said. “Debbie was on the 6th. Cindy was on the 25th and my name was in an empty box next to the 28.”
When she was a bit older, and understood the cosmic significance of her birthday, being a leaper became a proud part of her identity. She started a birthday club in Los Angeles in 1988 with 21 members. In 1997, she combined efforts with another birthday club created by a man in Vancouver, B.C., and leapyearday.com was born. Today, Dawn claims to have more than 11,000 leap day birthday club members around the world.
Beyond being a birthday club, the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies also takes on an advocacy role. Among their goals: getting the words “leap day” written on calendars, and getting the words leap day and leap year day capitalized in dictionaries. (Sorry, they aren’t currently capitalized according to the Associated Press stylebook.) The group also wants to make sure computer systems are “leapified” and able to recognize Feb. 29 as a valid date, and that hospitals and doctors don’t alter leap day birth certificates.
On the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies Facebook page, members share their stories. Jessica Delatorre from Amarillo, Texas wrote that when she got her driver’s license at age 16, the DMV changed her birthday to the 28th because the computer system didn’t recognize her real birthday. Dawn Turnbeaugh, of Bethalto, Illinois, said a doctor convinced her mother to have her birth recorded as March 1 so “she would have a normal birthday.” Though all her identification lists her birthday as being in March, family lore has always maintained her birthday as leap day.
But those generally seem to be problems of the past. Delatorre posted that her license today has her correct birthday. The Oregon DMV confirmed its computers recognize Feb. 29th birthdays, and both Providence and Kaiser Permanente hospitals say babies born on Feb. 29 are recorded as such.
The Oregon Health Authority’s vital records office reports that 127 babies were born in Oregon on the last leap day in 2016.
Today’s leap day frustrations come more from the mundane. One Honor Society member complained that Red Robin never sends birthday coupons on non-leap years. Dawn most recently emailed a complaint to Kohl’s, where birthday coupons offered to leap day babies expire, not on the 29th, but the 28th of the month.
“We’re not saving the world here, we get that,” she said. “They’re little issues that we want to make right. We don’t want the little leaplings born on this leap day to go through the things that we’ve gone through.”
-- Samantha Swindler; sswindler@oregonian.com; @editorswindler
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