Update: 1st Tri-Cities baby of the new year is “a little legend”

Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland welcomed the Tri-Cities’ first baby of the year, a boy born at 4:28 a.m. New Year’s Day.

“We met on New Year’s five years ago so it’s a full circle moment,” said new parents Trista and Ryan Lewis, of Pasco, in a statement released by Kadlec Thursday.

“We had to add to all the awesome memories this day,” they said. “He is a little legend already.”

The new parents have named him Cooper. He is their first child.

Cooper was born at 4:28 a.m. weighing 8 pounds and 7 ounces. He is 21.2 inches long, Kadlec reported.

The Kadlec Auxiliary Gift Shop donated a gift to the family.

Trios 1st baby

About two hours after Cooper Lewis arrived, a baby girl was born at Trios Southridge Hospital in Kennewick.

Her parents, Margarita and Sergio, named her Mia Marie. The family’s last name was not released.

Mia was born at 6:31 a.m., weighing 5 pounds and 12 ounces and measuring 18 inches.

“We’re delighted to welcome our newest family member,” said the new mom in a statement, and thanked the doctors nurses and staff at the Trios Birth Center for the good care she and Mia received.

Kadlec 80 years ago

In 1946 Richland claimed to lead the nation in the national number of births by population, although the actual number of births was a military secret. Officials feared the number could give Germany and Japan a clue about the size of the Hanford workforce, according to Kadlec historical information.

The hospital says Richland had 35 births per 1,000 population compared to a national average of 20 births per 1,000 in 1946, the year the first baby boomers were born.

Kadlec had to expand its maternity wing from six beds and six bassinets before the hospital even opened in 1944 to 22 bassinets and 30 cribs.

Then it served only the Hanford workforce, their families and other citizens within government-controlled Richland. There was speculation at the time that a lack of social activities encouraged more pregnancies, according to Kadlec historical information.

The first baby born in 1946 at the hospital was Carol Trautman, who now lives in Arizona.

She recently donated a framed copy of a full-page ad in the Richland Villager newspaper announcing her birth.

It described her as “a chubby little rascal,” at a time when most World War II food rationing had only recently ended.

Trautman’s parents, Edward and Elizabeth Taylor, had come to Richland from Tennessee in search of work, and her father had accepted a welding job at what is now the Hanford nuclear site.

The site produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, just months before Trautman’s birth, and would continue to produce plutonium through the Cold War.

The article and attention on their baby helped make her parents, who knew nobody when they arrived in Richland, feel part of the community, Trautman told Kadlec.

Having the first baby “was big for them,” she said.

Businesses stepped up with donations for the whole family at a time when goods were still in short supply after the end of World War II.

Donations included baby blankets, milk, 5 gallons of gas, a side of bacon, grape juice from the Kennewick Church Grape Juice factory, a steam clean for their car and a pair of nylon hose, an item that was difficult to obtain in 1946.

As a child Trautman would tease her sister, saying that she was so great that she received an award just for being born.

The newspaper ad Trautman donated now hangs outside the Kadlec birth center.

This story was originally published January 1, 2026 at 7:47 PM.