Woodstock babies: Where did they go?

Published 10:45 pm Friday, July 17, 2009

BETHEL, N.Y. — Welcome to middle age, Woodstock Baby — if you’re really out there.

The babies reportedly born at the Woodstock festival 40 years ago remain the most enduring mystery from that chaotic weekend that defined a generation. Depending on the source, there was one birth on that patch of upstate New York farmland between Aug. 15-17, 1969. Or two. Or three. Or none.

There is some tantalizing evidence. Singer John Sebastian is captured on film announcing that some cat’s old lady just had a baby, a kid destined to be far out. A couple of surviving eyewitnesses say there were births. The concert’s medical director told reporters at the scene there were two births: one at a local hospital after the mother was flown out by helicopter; the other in a car caught in the epic traffic jam outside the site crowded with more than 400,000 people.

But no one has come forward with a credible public claim of giving birth to a Woodstock baby or being born there. No one has produced proof that it happened. If babies were born at Woodstock, they have lived their lives ignoring — or unaware of — the fact that reporters and researchers have been on their trail for decades.

“I’ve searched, I’ve spoken to the doctors and nurses from the main hospitals that were there,” said Myron Gittell, who wrote the new medical history, “Woodstock ‘69: Three Days of Peace, Music, and Medical Care.”

Like many before him, he found nothing.

“Almost statistically, you’d think if there are a half-million people, and half of them were women, and 95 percent of them were of childbearing age, and fertile, and active. Just statistically, someone would have had to pop a baby.”

Problem is: No one has been able to dig up a birth record.

Rita Sheehan, town clerk for Bethel, which hosted the concert, said there is no local birth certificate on record. Still, it’s possible the birth was recorded in one of the surrounding towns. Gittell says there were births recorded in neighboring towns in that period, but the records are sealed under state privacy laws. There’s no way to check whether the birth mothers were locals or out-of-towners (the likely pool of Woodstock moms).

Maybe the best argument against a Woodstock baby is that no one in the past four decades has stepped forward to credibly claim they were born or gave birth at Woodstock.

But it bears saying as the 40th anniversary of Woodstock approaches. If you are a Woodstock baby or a Woodstock mother, please consider contacting The Associated Press at woodstockbaby@ap.org.

People have been looking for you.