Asher Behrend Brewer, a 5-week-old boy from Harborcreek, bears the University’s namesake because it “would be appropriate to include something about Asher’s unusual birth in his name,” said his father, Nathan Brewer.
The father helped deliver his son as his wife lay reclined in the passenger seat of their car, parked in the center median of the Bayfront Connector in front of campus some 20 minutes after midnight on New Year’s Eve. The couple selected the baby’s middle name in honor of the campus next to which he was born.
His wife, Kathy, already a mother of three, had been timing her contractions throughout the day.
“As we left the driveway, the midwife called us back and said she would meet us at Saint Vincent,” Nathan said. “We came down the hill toward the entrance of the college on the Bayfront Connector and Kathy began to cry out, ‘The baby’s coming! The baby’s coming!’”
Under the traffic light directly across from Penn State Behrend, his wife’s water broke.
After some quick deliberation, Nathan parked the car in the center median. The roads were clear; the day’s sun had melted them clean before the night’s chill took hold. With the night sky above him and temperatures in the 20s, he got out and ran to the passenger side door. Asher was born then, into his hands.
The Brewers’ blessing is doing wonderfully, according to his parents. Asher “sleeps, eats, sleeps, eats and goes through a ton of diapers,” according to his mother.
