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'I am the real Million Dollar Baby'

By KELLEY BENHAM
Published February 3, 2005

[Times photo: Cherie Diez]

It took 10 years for Ruth and Al Meyers to have Million Dollar Baby. “It cost me a lot of money to have her,” says Al, who named his daughter.

ST. PETERSBURG - The news blipped innocently onto her screen. An instant message from her friend Derek said something like, "Hey, did you hear about that movie Million Dollar Baby?' " She had not heard about the stupid movie, but he was kind enough to send a link, because he thought it was so interesting, and as he was trying to convince her how special this was, how "awesome," Million Dollar Baby Meyers got mad and logged off.

"I was like, "No! No! No! No! No!' " said Million Dollar Baby, who is 18 and lives in St. Petersburg and carries multiple forms of identification. "My eyes got all watery and I was sad."

Now in the halls at Northeast High (where her ID card says "Million Doll Meyers" or in her checkout line at Albertsons (where her name tag says "Million"), people ask if she is aware that Clint Eastwood has made a movie about her. They ask if she changed her name. They suggest boxing lessons, so she can be like the "real million dollar baby."

She does not appreciate that suggestion. "I am the real Million Dollar Baby," she says. She has not seen the movie, but she did see the preview at BayWalk. She came home crying.

She is a petite girl, not prone to violence, although she did knock down a fat man in a mosh pit once. She makes her own clothes, sometimes out of fishnet, and sings soprano and has a guitar she can't play. She wants to go to a Christian college and open a youth ranch for troubled kids.

She wants people to know she had the name first. She has the birth certificate and everything. So one day, sitting at a computer with her friend Ahnna Odell, she got an idea.

"Write the St. Pete Times a letter, right now," Million Dollar Baby said.

"What?" Ahnna said.

"Right now."

So here's the story. Al and Ruth Meyers already had seven kids between them when they got married 27 years ago: Rodney, Martin, Altrina, Sean, Amy, Kathy and Michelle.

Ruth wanted one more, but she had to bargain for it.

"The deal was, if I got pregnant, he got to name the child," Ruth says. "So I said okay, not knowing, at the time, what the child's name was going to be."

She hoped it would be Maria, after Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

Al had fertility troubles. It took 10 years, considerable hassle and tens of thousands of dollars before the baby arrived.

When it did, he named her, and he was not kidding.

"It cost me a lot of money to have her," says Al, 59.

His wife was astonished, particularly when the pediatrician said they were ruining their newborn daughter's life. When the staff at St. Anthony's asked her to reconsider the name for the birth certificate, she grew defiant.

"Touch that birth certificate," she said, "and I'll own the hospital."

Their daughter answered to Maria when she started school. It's easier to spell. She got teased a lot in the early grades. Year after year, her parents asked if she wanted a new name. Every year she said no. Eventually, she started going by "Million" most of the time.

Her name reminds her how much they wanted her. It reminds her how her father, who had refused to hold his other children before they were 6 months old, scooped her into his arms in the hospital.

It has made her feel special every day of her life. Until this recent injustice, it has been completely, uniquely, hers.

She has a name picked out for her first daughter, but it's nothing original.

"Million Dollar Baby Jr.," she says.

-- Kelley Benham can be reached at 727 893-8848 or benham@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 2, 2005, 17:36:02]