Baby JoAnna Ray Hadassah Chatham carries a wealth of family history in her name, and her birth story as Central Peninsula Hospital’s first baby of 2015…
Chatham: “We were actually a little surprised, because she was born on the 2ndf, not the 1st. My mother, the baby’s grandmother, was actually the first baby born in the state of Alaska in 1960, so this is the second one in the family.”
JoAnna’s mother, Amber, welcomed her second daughter at 5:17pm January 2nd at 8lbs .4oz.
Isaac and Amber chose the baby’s name carefully…
Chatham: “JoAnna is my middle name, Ray is my brother-in-law’s middle name, my husband wanted to name it after him, he’s getting ready to be deployed, and Hadassah is Queen Esther’s Jewish name, and she’s my favorite Bible character.”
Ivan ‘Ray’ Chatham had a chance to hold his new niece before flying to East Africa with the Alaska Air National Guard’s 176th.
The couple’s older daughter, 4-year-old Mary-Katherine “Magpie”, had been asking for a little sister since she learned to speak…
Chatham: “Oh she just kept repeating over and over again, ‘She’s so beautiful, she’s so perfect, she’s so beautiful.'”
JoAnna will also inherit a nickname, “Johnny” as in ‘John Wayne.’