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Hallelujah! The city's first baby of 2001 is a 'Messiah'
Tuesday, January 02, 2001 By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
For those who look for signs and omens, how about this?
Pittsburgh's first baby of the new year -- and for purists, the new century and millennium -- is Messiah.
Messiah Jalyn Williams.
"It has strong meaning," said Messiah's mother, Gwendolyn Lazette Hardman, 19, of Hazelwood, who searched the Bible for her first child's name.
Among Webster's Dictionary definitions of the word "messiah" is "a professed or accepted leader of some hope or cause."
Dozing peacefully in her mother's arms yesterday, Messiah, who weighed in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces and measured 19 inches, was oblivious to the significance of her name or birth timing.
Born at 12:14 a.m. yesterday at The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Bloomfield, Messiah appeared to have a lock on being the city's first newborn of the new year and, for sticklers, the new millennium.
Hardman, a 1999 Westinghouse High School graduate, wasn't interested yesterday in trying to claim any millennium titles, particularly since she, like most people, regarded the new millennium as starting last year.
"But we didn't expect her to come on this day or that it would be this exciting," she said as she posed for photographs with her daughter.
Although the baby was due next Sunday, Hardman and her family were anticipating a Christmas Day birth, which would have fit nicely with the name that had already been chosen.
Then they thought the baby might come on Dec. 27, when Hardman had what turned out to be false labor.
Hardman returned home only to go back to West Penn on Sunday because she was having contractions.
"We thought it was another false labor, but they said, 'This is it,'" Hardman recalled.
Hospital staff also told Hardman that there was a chance her child might be the first baby of 2001 because no one else was in labor or scheduled to come in at West Penn. That appeared to be the case also at other local hospitals.
Of course, at the time, Hardman and her family weren't focused on making history.
"Last baby going out, first going in. It didn't matter as long as she was healthy," said Hardman's mother, Gwendolyn Ann Hardman, who is called "Big Gwen."
Also more important to the baby's grandmother was the fact that Messiah represents the fifth generation of Hardman women. Messiah's great-great-grandmother is Gertrude Hardman of Plum.
Messiah's mother, who at 6 feet, 1 inch tall played center for the Westinghouse Bulldogs, already has sent the baby's picture to the basketball team.
Hardman wants to study to be an electrician, but she's putting that on hold for a while so she can stay at home with Messiah.
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