Babies born on Tucson’s birthday get special welcome

Babies born at local hospitals on this Aug. 20 — the same day the Tucson Presidio was founded in 1775 — will receive commemorative birth certificates and welcome packets, as part of a tradition kept alive since 2007 by one dedicated local family.

This year, though, the special deliveries are being made with the help of a new team of volunteers from the local nonprofit cultural organization Los Descendientes de Tucson.

“We’d like to keep the tradition going because it’s special,” said Los Descendientes board member Evelyn Jacobs. “It’s unique.”

In addition to a certificate, Los Descendientes and the Tucson Presidio Trust will present the parents of each Aug. 20 newborn with a letter and a children’s book called “Elena and the Coin: Exploring Tucson’s Presidio Heritage,” by Laura Orabone and Elizabeth Buckman.

The tradition began in 2006, during the inaugural Tucson Birthday Celebration launched by local icon, businesswoman and “first lady of fashion” Cele Peterson.

As part of the festivities, a special certificate was presented to every baby born in Tucson on Aug. 20. Tucson Medical Center also gave out commemorative medallions to newborns that day as part of its business partnership with the communitywide celebration.

The following year, Peterson convinced her long-time friend, Norma Kelsey Fisher, to continue the birthday baby project at four hospitals and a stand-alone birthing center in Tucson. Norma and her husband, David Fisher, carried on the tradition by themselves for several years after that, before recruiting Fisher’s daughter, Tricia Potter, to help them out.

“I started driving them around in 2010,” Potter said.

She gradually took on more and more of the work, as it became harder — not to mention riskier — for her elderly mom and stepfather to walk around the hallways of hospitals. But for as long as they were able to, they would still ride along with her to “make sure it got done,” Potter said with a laugh.

“COVID was a challenge, I’ll tell you,” she said.

Potter has maintained the tradition on her own since David died in 2022 at the age of 91 and Norma died the following year at age 89.

She delivered 28 commemorative birth certificates to area hospitals last year. The most her mom and stepdad delivered in a single year was 51, which happened in both 2007 and 2008.

The certificates feature copies, in English and Spanish, of the original 1775 proclamation by Spanish Army Lt. Col. Hugo O’Conor designating the site of the Tucson Presidio.

Potter said her mother used to write each baby’s name, birthdate and measurements in calligraphy on the certificates, but that got more and more difficult to do over the years as hospital privacy rules grew more strict. Now those lines are left blank for the parents to fill in themselves.

“It’s not legal,” she said of the document. “It’s just a good way to celebrate Tucson’s birthday.”

The routine goes something like this: Potter gets up “really, really early in the morning” on Aug. 21 so she can leave her home in Sahuarita and make it to St. Joseph’s Hospital by about 8 a.m.

Once there, she will track down someone in security or the records office who can connect her with the head nurse in the maternity department. That’s when she finds out how many babies were born the previous day and how many certificates she needs to leave for them.

Then it’s off to the next hospital to repeat the process. Potter said it usually takes her about 2½ to three hours to complete all her deliveries — St. Joseph’s to TMC to Northwest Hospital to Banner-University Medical Center, driving the same route her stepfather came up with.

She gets started early, she said, because most new mothers only spend about 24 hours in the hospital after giving birth these days.

Potter plans to make the run one last time on Thursday with the folks from Los Descendientes, so she can show them the ropes before she turns the birthday baby project over to them for good.

“I hope it keeps going,” she said. “My family’s just big on Tucson.”

Of course, Potter’s connection runs a little deeper than most. She was born on Aug. 20, just like the Old Pueblo was.

Though she was hardly a newborn at the time, Potter said, her mom still gave her a special birth certificate of her own back in 2007, with her name written on it in calligraphy.