This Leap Year baby is feeling his age
Frank Crossin, a clerical supervisor at the city's Criminal Justice Center, will celebrate his 17th birthday on Monday. OK, he's really turning 68. But, his birthday is on Feb. 29, so it comes only once every four years, during Leap Year.
Frank Crossin, a clerical supervisor at the city's Criminal Justice Center, will celebrate his 17th birthday on Monday. OK, he's really turning 68. But, his birthday is on Feb. 29, so it comes only once every four years, during Leap Year.
You might have met Crossin if you've gone to the third-floor Clerk of Courts office in the city's main criminal courthouse, at 13th and Filbert Streets, near City Hall. He's one of the people sitting behind the desk when you ask to look at old court files.
We asked Crossin, who was born in 1948 and lives in Northeast Philadelphia, what it's like to still be a teenager.
Q: What are you doing to celebrate your birthday this year?
A: I'll go out with my girlfriend for dinner and my secretary is taking me to lunch in the daytime. . . . I'm working half a day, until 1:30.
Q: Growing up, did you get cheated out of celebrating your birthday?
A: Not really, because once I got into my 20s and 30s, when I used to have a beer here and there, I could celebrate on the 28th, go into a bar and say, "Hey I'm celebrating my birthday," and then I'd do it the next day on March 1 and say, "Well, this is when I always celebrate my birthday."
So you'd get a few beers over the years for free. . . . When I got into my 40s, I hardly celebrated either day.
Q: Tell the truth: are you tired of people making Leap Year jokes?
A: No. I'm just fascinated by the number of people I've seen over the years that I haven't seen since I went to St. Ambrose [a former first-to-eighth grade Catholic school on Roosevelt Boulevard]. . . . They say, "How old are you now?"
It just stays in their mind. . . . When it comes Monday, there will be a whole lot of people in this city saying, "I wonder how Frankie Crossin is doing? I remember he used to be a Leap Year baby."
Q: What's the most annoying question people have asked you about your Leap Year birthday?
A: That question: "How old are you now?" Yeah, that gets a little repetitious.
Q: But still, you seem to be OK with it.
A: Oh, it's fine. Yeah. I've gotten my picture and name in the paper when I was 4 years old, technically I was only 1. . . .
Another thing, in 1976, I was dying to see the Villanova-St. Joe's game, and they were sold out. There was a guy who wrote a column in the Daily News at that time called Mr. Fix-It. . . . So my fiancee, just for the hell of it, called him and told him that her fiance was a Leap Year guy, any chance of getting Villanova-St. Joe's tickets?
And he called the next day and said there will be two waiting for you. . . . That was the nicest birthday present I've ever had, come to think of it. . . . And St. Joe's won, to make it even better.
Q: And you were also written about in the Inquirer in 1968. The article, which my editor found on microfilm, says you were an Army soldier at the time and were marking your fifth birthday. When did you join the Army?
A: I went in November of 1967. . . . I was drafted.
Q: Did you have to go to Vietnam?
A: No. I don't know why, but I didn't. . . . Fort Bliss, Texas. I was there a year and a half. . . . I was a supply sergeant.
Q: Were you ever married?
A: Yeah, I was married. Twice. I've been a widower for 12 years now.
(He married the woman who had called Mr. Fix-It, but they got divorced. His second wife died from cancer.)
Q: Is there any common trait that you've found among people born on Leap Day?
A: No. I've never met anyone born on that day.
Q: Besides asking for old court files, why else do people come in the Clerk of Courts office?
A: Some private investigative people come in here to try to dig up addresses of people they're looking for. And women, to see if their new boyfriend has a rap sheet.
Q: Do you feel like you're 17 or closer to 70?
A: (Laughs out loud.) Closer to 80. No, not bad at all.
215-854-2592@julieshawphilly