By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
Isabel Lietz 
Chloe Hanson
Chloe Hanson and Isabel Lietz don’t need someone to tell them they are special.
They were born that way.
Officially, they only celebrate a birthday on the day they were born every four years.
Hanson will celebrate for the sixth time on Saturday. For Lietz, it will be the third time she gets recognized on the day of her birth.
Hanson and Lietz are both Leap Year babies, born on Feb. 29, but in different centuries.
Statisticians have computed the odds of having that rare date as your birthday: 1 in 1,461. Roughly 0.07 percent of the world’s population shares a birthday with Hanson and Lietz.
That makes them pretty special.
Hanson, who graduated from Mahomet-Seymour High School in 2014, has found times when her birthday is especially helpful.
“It makes for some great ‘2 truths and 1 lie’ material,” Hanson said. “Ninety-nine percent of the year I’m not thinking about it, so every once in a while I almost have to remind myself, ‘oh yeah, that’s a thing.’”
Lietz sees the time period around her birthday as an opportunity to have multiple parties.
“I like it because last year we celebrated for a few days, since it wasn’t my actual birthday,” Lietz said.
Neither Hanson’s mother nor Lietz’s mother were expecting to deliver a child on Feb. 29.
“Our first child was two weeks late, so Thane and I were completely surprised when I began having contractions and the doctor told us to head to the hospital on Leap Day 1996, three weeks before her due date of March 21,” Heidi Hanson said.
The story was the same for Kristi and Jake Lietz, as they, too, prepared for their second child, who was due in mid-March.
“She went in for a routine appointment (on the morning of Feb. 29, 2008),” Jake Lietz said. “She was having some contractions, but told me to go to work.”
He was soon summoned to the hospital.
“A few hours later, she was in labor,” Jake Lietz said. “I rushed to the hospital and got there literally as she was being born (around 11 a.m.).”
The Hansons were happy that there were no complications except for the one that showed up on the calendar.
“I wasn’t super excited that she was going to have such a unique birthday, because it disappeared from the calendar but every four years,” Heidi Hanson said. “Thane thought it was super cool.”
Chloe Hanson came to like the date, though there were some struggles when she was younger.
“Growing up, I would groan whenever people made jokes because I heard the same two or three,” she said.
She developed a retort.
“I would usually hit back with something like, ‘but when you’re 100, I’ll only be 25,’” Chloe Hanson said.
Picking the day to celebrate the birthday is always a challenge for three of the years. One school of thought is to pick the March date since that is in line with their original due dates.
“My wife says ‘March 1st,’ and I say, ‘Feb. 28th,’” Jake Lietz said.
Some years, there’s a logical reason to pick the party date.
“It can depend on when the weekend is,” Jake Lietz added.
For Chloe Hanson, she prefers that her birthday arrives early.
“Usually if it’s not a leap year I’ll celebrate on the 28th,” she said. “Something about March 1st just feels super anti-climactic.
“I think maybe it’s because in my brain my birthday is just the last day of February, so the 28th fits that criteria pretty well.”
Hanson’s 16th birthday in 2012 was a memorable one and included an impromptu party.
“I bought gourmet muffins, orange juice and milk, arranged them on a decorated cart, and wheeled it into the band room at MSHS,” Heidi Hanson said. “Her muffin had a lit candle and the whole band sang to her.
“She was pretty surprised.”
Chloe Hanson is appreciative of the efforts her family made to go all out for the Feb. 29 birthdays.
“My parents always tried to make the Leap Day birthdays a little more special than the rest,” she said.
“Over the years, we have tried to make a big deal when it is her ‘real’ birthday,” Heidi Hanson said. “Bigger parties, special surprises.”
Even though Lietz – a sixth-grade student at Mahomet Seymour Junior High – has the actual day to celebrate this year (Saturday), it will turn into a weekend event.
“We leave it up to her what she wants to do,” Jake Lietz said. “She is taking friends to an escape room, then dinner and a sleepover (on Saturday).
“We’ll have a family party on Sunday.”
Chloe Hanson, a 2018 University of Illinois graduate who works in Asia, expects she will fully accept the concept of Leap Year birthdays in a few more decades.
“I probably won’t totally embrace my Leap Day birthday until I’m old and wishing I could shave off a few years,” she said.
Heidi Hanson said one of the most memorable stories about her daughter’s birthday didn’t even occur around her birthday.
“We were going through customs, returning from a family vacation,” Heidi Hanson said. “The customs officer called us forward, one by one, as he examined our passports.
“When he got to Chloe, he nearly flipped out because he was so excited to meet someone with a Leap Day birthday. He shook her hand like she was a celebrity.”
There’s no shortage of historical figures – and celebrities – with Feb. 29 birthdays, including Pope Paul III (born in 1468) and also including actors such as Dennis Farina, Ja Rule and Alex Rocco as well as authors Tony Robbins and Dee Brown (not the ex-Illini). The late Dinah Shore was also born on Feb. 29.
Regardless of how many days the calendar shows for February in a given year, Isabel Lietz is proud of her birthday.
“It makes me feel like I was supposed to be born on that day,” she said. “It makes me feel special.”
