By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
New Year’s Eve, 1999, the world was on edge.
People feared a computer programing shortcut would cause computers worldwide to crash because they couldn’t handle dates beyond 1999.
The Y2K bug had some people in full survivalist mode.
Angie Peck, then living in McClure, had other issues to contend with. She was expecting a baby within days. Some friends had even sent her suggestions about home remedies that would speed along her delivery so she could deliver on New Year’s Day. Maybe toast in the New Year with castor oil?
Peck wasn’t interested in that. She had three daughters who were excited about the coming new millennium.
They’d talked about it leading up to New Year’s Eve, Peck said, and then followed the turning of the millennium across the globe leading up to the ball drop in Times Square .
At 11:30 p.m. Peck started having contractions. The girls were intent on seeing the ball drop. So, Peck got their coats on, and held on. As soon as it turned midnight, they were out the door, and headed from McClure to the Wood County Hospital.
Peck remembers driving down the street, checking to make sure the lights were still on.
At 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, Blayzey Rose was born, Wood County’s first baby of the millennium.
On New Year’s Day, 2021, Rose celebrated her 21st birthday. Unlike the false alarm of Y2K, the world is now in the grips of an actual pandemic. So, she marked the big day with her roommates in an apartment in Bowling Green.
Rose grew up in Arkansas where her father, Billy Rose, lives. She returned to Bowling Green in 2019 to attend Bowling Green State University as a transfer student, after earning an associate degree at a technical college in Arkansas.
She wanted to move away and attend a university. Bowling Green offered that opportunity in a place where she has family nearby, including two of her five sisters who live near her apartment.
After taking a year off, she enrolled in BGSU this fall to study forensic science. But the rigors of taking classes during the pandemic caused her to rethink her plans. She wanted to study people, she decided, and do something more creative.
Now Rose is considering switching her major to sociology, and adding a minor in art. At this point, she said she is more “a hobbyist” as an artist working in oils and colored pencil drawing.
Rose said she usually starts celebrating her birthday on New Year’s Eve. It’s fun because people are already celebrating.
And every year, she hears the story of her birth and claim to fame. “I would always joke I was famous when I was born.”
