On May 28, 1975, at 4:40 am, I was introduced to the world. I was born in a hospital in Towson, Maryland. I was nine pounds and four ounces.

Each of my siblings and I had some kind of complication during birth. Mine was that the umbilical cord wrapped around me, and my heart beat shot up over 400 bpm. Looking at my mother’s journal, her placenta had torn as well. One thing I recall her saying is that after giving birth, she walked over to an open window to feel the air as she recovered.

I was the first of four children. I was named after my grandfather, Lewis Edward Moten, who passed away when my father was young. I don’t know much about him other than an accident with flying a toy airplane to impress some children on a bus, where he got electrocuted, and a story about him getting upset at my dad for dropping a watermelon when unloading groceries.

Dad’s Experience

On Dad’s birthday in 2026, we talked a little about my birth. He had read about women who would spend many days in the hospital going through labor. From his perspective, it sounded like he could take an extra shift at Crown Cork & Seal to help support my birth financially, so he dropped Mom off at the hospital and went in for his shift that evening, May 27th. By the time he got off from work on the 28th, I was already born. He learned from his experience and was present for all three of my siblings’ births after that.