What Became of Baby New Year

Holly Hammer | Jan. 1, 1976

Her father wanted to name her Holly America Hammer. That would have made her sound like a porn star, she laughs.

(Melina Mara/twp)

Thirty years ago today, Holly Hammer became the "National Bicentennial Baby" -- apparently the first born, locally and maybe nationally, in the year of the nation's 200th birthday.

After she arrived, at 15 seconds past midnight in Georgetown University Hospital, Chuck and Valerie Hammer laid her in a red, white and blue bed, decorated with American flags and aluminum foil streamers. Her father, mindful of her pending arrival and infused with the spirit of '76, said he had done research in the Library of Congress to suitably mark the event.

Some kind of patriotic middle name for the baby seemed appropriate. But what?

The Bicentennial was, perhaps, the first really national celebration since the end of World War II. It marked the country's emergence from the social turbulence of the 1960s and sparked a wave of patriotic hoopla. It was a good year, recalls Holly's mother. "It was before we worried about a lot of stuff we worry about now."

One name Chuck Hammer thought about was "America." "I think we're going to go with something commemorative of the Bicentennial, like Holly America Hammer," he told a reporter the day Holly was born.

He really considered it, Holly, now an attorney in Santa Monica, Calif., says. "I always tease him: 'Way to go, Dad,' " she jokes. "I would have been scarred for life if I had been named America."

Instead, on that sleeting New Year's morning of 1976, the Hammers named their baby girl Holly Elizabeth-Ross Hammer, in honor of Christmas, the Bicentennial and another Jan. 1 baby: Philadelphia flag-maker Betsy Ross.

Ross, who, according to tradition, sewed the first Stars and Stripes flag, was born Jan. 1, 1752. "She's the mother of the flag," Chuck Hammer announced the day after Holly's birth. "Picked the colors, too. She was a very well-read woman and pretty forward thinking for her time. That's the way we want our daughter to be."

Asked if she turned out that way, he laughs. "She's a great kid," he says. "She's worked hard. I think she's accomplished a lot."

And how did Holly fare with her name? "I think I did okay [with] Betsy Ross," she says.

D. Louis Nicholson Jan. 1, 1955

D. Louis Nicholson's law office occupies prime space: a suite at Two Penn Center, a gleaming high-rise across the street from Philadelphia City Hall. Getting there wasn't easy for Nicholson. He started late and took the long road.