John Barrett was just a few hours old when our camera saw him for the first time, sleeping quietly in his mother's arms. This year, we decided to check in with him again, as he and his family prepared to celebrate another milestone: his 21st birthday.
"I don't know if I've ever seen that before," Barrett said after watching a video more than 20 years old.
"That's back when you were cute," his father joked. "What happened?"
We sat down with John, his parents Linda and Steven and his younger sister Lindsay, and shared the brief video WDBJ7 aired on January 1st, 1992.
"Looking at the video," Steven Barrett told us, "it's hard to believe how young we were. I don't remember ever being that young."
The details our story didn't include in 1992 were the weeks Linda Barrett had spent in the hospital, and the worries of a difficult pregnancy she hasn't forgotten.
"It's hard to believe that 21 years have passed," Linda Barrett said in an interview, "and at the time we didn't know if he was going to survive or not, so it's been a blessing."
In the years since, John has outgrown those early challenges. "Right now, I'm still taking classes at Virginia Western," he told us.
He and his sister are close. "He's good," Lindsay Barrett said. "We get along really well, have the same interests, so - I know he's always looking out for me."
John says he's looking forward to being "fully legal," but he isn't planning a blowout for a milestone birthday. "Just quiet I guess, just with my family, maybe my grandparents, so just a nice day."
And that seems just about right, for a family we first met 21 years ago.
