Baby New Year turns 50

A story that could only happen in Noblesville

By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com

“Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to Jan. 2, 1975,” thus quoth Mr. Peabody. Or at least he would, if Mr. Peabody were real and if he knew what we were writing about today.

Hamilton County’s Baby New Year in 1975 was named Candice Castor. On the cusp of her 50^th birthday, she is now Candice Johns.

Back in 1975, she and her parents were given a bundle of gifts from local businesses. There was a baby book, flowers for her mother, a free portrait, multiple gift certificates, a savings account, and many other things including a sterling silver cup engraved just for her.

Over the intervening decades, that cup was lost. With a little help, Candice Johns tracked down an old article from The Noblesville Daily Ledger and learned it came from Smith’s Jewelers, 98 N. 9th St., Noblesville.

 

You see where this is going, don’t you, dear readers?

Yes, thanks to an anonymous donor, The Reporter helped 1975’s Baby New Year get an identical silver cup from the very same store as the original.

When The Reporter first spoke to Smith’s Jewelers CFO Johanna Hieser, Johns had left the store only moments before.

“She showed me the news article on her phone,” Hieser said. “She was basically wanting to know if we have the baby cup here and if we were able to engrave it. I told her yes and yes. Candice was going to try to go look through some pictures because she thought it looked a little bigger. We were really just trying to figure out if there was a size difference. I know these are the ones that they carried, but there is only one little caveat: she was going to look at some pictures to see, size-wise, if it’s about the same.”

Johns was clearly satisfied it was at least very close to the same size cup, as you can see in the photo in today’s edition where Hieser is giving the replacement cup to Johns just a few weeks after that first visit to Smith’s Jewelers.

Johns told The Reporter she knew the original article had been published in The Ledger. When she reached out to this newspaper for help, she had no idea The Ledger had been sold to The Indianapolis Star, then rebranded, then finally dissolved.

“I was looking everywhere for it,” Johns said. “It was through Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com that I finally found it.”

According to Johns, the original cup was lost in a common, but still tragic way. Having been stored at her mother’s home, through inheritance and happenstance, the cup was lost.

“It went to my sister when my mom passed away because my sister acquired the residence,” Johns said. “Then she moved to Ohio with all this stuff that my parents kept of mine. Junior trophies, pictures, all of those things went with them to Ohio, and unfortunately, they couldn’t pay their storage bill. Instead of saying, ‘hey can I borrow some money?’ the locker was sold.”

When she held the new version of her baby cup earlier this month, Johns was that particular brand of happy that brings tears.

“The jewelry store is still here, the hospital I was born in is still there, and my daughter works at that hospital,” Johns said.

That hospital, of course, is Riverview.

Hieser told The Reporter she had not heard of anything like this happening before, but she didn’t find it very surprising that it could happen in Noblesville.

“I do love the historical aspects about the city and definitely the building that we’re in,” Hieser told The Reporter. “I’m not necessarily surprised by it, but doesn’t it make you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself?”

Johns, on the other hand, was surprised.

“It’s pretty cool, and I don’t know what other cities in the United States do this for their first baby of the year,” Johns said. “Do they even do that anymore?”

Candice, even if they do, they almost certainly do not do so with gifts from a business that will be in the same location 50 years later to help with something like this.