Thanks, Jedidah.
It appears from the BC’s posted online that Kapiolani at least sent their BC’s to the state registrar on Fridays. I don’t have a lot of the Tripler or Wahiawa BC’s but it seems like Tuesday may have been the day for them. It could be that they staggered the days so that Kaiser-Queens had one day, Kapiolani another, etc. That would keep things on a more continuous basis rather than everything coming in on one day.
Just looking at the Kapiolani BC’s (since that’s where Nordykes were born and where Obama claims he was born), if they gave their BC’s to the state registrar on Friday, when would you expect the typesetting for that list of births to be done, and what kind of publishing date would that result in?
Regarding births from the other islands, if those were reported on a master list by the DOH, wouldn’t those have to be included in the Honolulu announcements? Or would a newspaper have discretion to print only certain announcements?
How would things be done if there were announcements for, say, 3 days in a row and then a couple days were skipped, and then 2 days in a row and then a day skipped.... IOW, if there were announcements on more than half the days but not all the days, and there was no rhyme or reason as to which days lacked announcements?
If there was a master DOH list of births for the week, what procedures would result in this kind of patchy outcome?
Well, patlin is saying that the Nordyke and Obama announcements ran three days apart. If that’s the case, maybe the newspapers printed them daily. But that’s hard to believe. Births simply are not breaking news.
An educated guess would be that a Friday deadline for submission would likely be for Sunday publication. But just because Kapiolani reported to the state registrar on Fridays doesn’t mean that the newspaper got the list the same day — unless the hospital made a carbon copy, which is indeed possible.
This was back in the days of mimeograph machines and carbon paper. That’s something to think about. Did Vital Stats compile a list especially for the newspaper, or did it require the list in triplicate from the hospital and then pass one copy on to the newspapers? We are SO spoiled to quick and easy copying. It was NOT easy then. No computers, no Xerox copiers.
If vital stats just got the birth certificates (no list) and had to take data from them to make a list, the labor involved might mean that they did not get the list ready for the newspaper on the same day they received the certificates.
The issue isn’t when the hospitals submitted to the registrar, but rather when the office of vital statistics submitted lists to the newspapers. How often did the newspapers print these announcements? It is indeed possible that various sources/hospitals reported to the state on different days and that the state, in turn, submitted the info to the newpapers not in one comprehensive batch per week but rather on different days sorted by source. If that’s the case, the newspapers may have printed announcements more than once a week with different locales on different days.
That would certainly explain what patlin claims. The Obama and Nordyke announcements on different days strongly suggests different places of birth. The Nordykes on the Kapiolani list, Obama on a general list that includes family-reported births?
Remember that this was in pre-computer days. I doubt that there would have been any effort made to merge lists from different sources. It would have to be done manually and would be labor intensive for no good reason. The births from each hospital would more likely be listed together. I forget how the Obama announcement column reads — is it alphabetical, sorted by date, etc? I need to go back and look.
I would seriously doubt that births from the outer islands would be merged with Honolulu births, but they could certainly have been at the beginning or end of the list. Or they could have had their own day.
As to newspapers’ discretion — they can print anything they want or omit anything they want to, as long as it’s not libelous. However, they really try to be as inclusive and fair as possible, and they would almost certainly try to include any reported birth in their circulation areas. They would just take the official report of vital records and print it as received, no editing. As I said before, this kind of stuff sells papers.
Pardon my meandering thoughts. Hope it makes sense.
Is it a known fact that all Hawaiian births were recorded in newspapers?
I was born in ‘68. My mother kept a very detailed baby book for me. Every darn thing you could think of was recorded or saved.
Same for my sister.
I remember asking her why there wasn’t a newspaper clipping about my birth in my baby book. (I was asking because my sister had one in hers’.)
She told me she never notified the newspaper about me being born. So no notice.
Just to add more to this story, my mother and father subscribed to and read daily every main newspaper in every city they ever lived. They spent a least an hour every evening going through them. (news junkies-old school style)
They read everything—news, sports, opinion, wedding and death notices, etc....
I’m thinking if my mother or father saw a notice of my birth, they would have saved it.
Just wondering aloud if every birth was put in the paper, or only when submitted.