Kunkler was Jay’s first baby of 1999

Twenty-five years ago this week, the race to be the first baby of the year born at Jay County Hospital came down to mere minutes.

The Jan. 6, 1999, edition of The Commercial Review featured a story about the first two babies — Erika Ann Kunkler and Adam Christopher Haffner — who were born at Jay County Hospital that year.

Erika, the daughter of Brian and Rebecca Kunkler of rural Portland, won the race, as she was born at 10:53 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 5, 1999. Adam, the son of James and Leta Haffner of rural Bryant, followed at 11:04 a.m.

“The nurses were kind of hinting around that we were close, but we didn’t care,” said Rebecca that evening. “It didn’t make any difference (whether I was first or not).”

Leta expressed a similar lack of concern about who came first.

Both families were more worried about being able to get to the hospital. 

“I kept thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to get snowed in and have to call a snow plow,” said Leta.

The Kunklers took precautions, with Brian fetching teenage nephew Matt Westgerdes to babysit their other children — 2-year-old Mitchell and 1-year-old Ava — just in case the delivery came during the snowstorm.

The hospital staff, however, was up for the excitement.

Leta recalled admitting clerk Michael Schmidt saying “the race is on” upon her arrival.

“We knew we could have taken bets, but we decided not to hype it up,” said nurse Gail Kuhn. “We didn’t want to push them.

While having multiple babies delivered that close together is not unusual for some hospitals, it was for Jay County.

Rebecca arrived at 3:10 a.m. that morning, with Leta 10 minutes behind her. That interval held almost exactly through delivery, as Dr. David Rohrer delivered Erika just 11 minutes before Dr. Frank Vormohr delivered Adam.