5th-Generation Baby Arrives Before Temblor

In the wee hours of Monday morning, the fifth generation of a Simi Valley family was born, just in time to feel an earthquake shake the maternity ward.

But Myrandah Renee Rhodes came through unscathed, and all her elders--her mother and father, her grandmother, her great-grandmother and her great-great-grandmother--spent much of the morning admiring her fiery red hair and sleepy blue eyes.

“I’m the oldest one. I’m the one who started all this,” said Mildred Shaver, 85, great-great-grandmother of the 7-pound, 14-ounce baby girl.

“I’m grateful. I’m happy to have lived all this time,” said Shaver, a Milwaukee native and former nightclub owner who has lived in Simi Valley since 1960. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d live to be fifth-generation. My only regret is that my husband [Joseph Shaver] is not alive to see this.”

Barely 12 hours old, Myrandah yawned and stretched Monday afternoon while her elders looked on and her mother, Laura Beall, and father, Jason Rhodes, both 19, recalled the night before.

When the magnitude-4.9 aftershock hit Simi Valley Hospital about 1:40 a.m., Myrandah--then only 50 minutes old--was being washed in another room and her mother was waiting for a general anesthetic to wear off.

“I had an epidural, and I was numb from the bellybutton down,” Beall said with a weary smile. “I was, like, stuck.”

Rhodes said he ran down the hall to make sure his infant daughter was safe while his mother, Cheryl Rhodes; his grandmother, Arliss DesHotel, and Shaver, who is his great-grandmother, stayed with Beall. eVeryone was unhurt, he said.

After things returned to normal, great-grandmother DesHotel, 59, said: “That baby is about a duplicate in looks for Cheryl [Rhodes, Myrandah’s grandmother] for the day she was born. She had the same red hair and never lost any of it.”

As baby Myrandah scrunched her eyes shut against the flashbulb glare of family snapshots and newspaper photos, grandmother Cheryl Rhodes, 38, said, “I just can’t believe this. The baby’s so pretty.”