Exclusive Feature: Booth Baby
This is the heartwarming story of how two students met through working on Booth together—and they even made a booth-themed house for their baby.
Baby John Wilkes, born on May 30, was the first child of Tartan alumni Tricia and Bill Ding. This couple first met when working on Booth together in their Senior year, and they’ve been together ever since. “After having spent 4 years at Carnegie Mellon, we didn’t really have any more money,” Tricia said. “Since we loved our time working on Booth so much, we thought that instead of buying a home for our baby, we could just build our own when we get married—for old time’s sake.” And ‘build it’ they did: in only 1 day and 5 HOA code violations, they made their dream house. “They say that the home is where the heart is,” commented Bill, “so it logically followed that our home had to be in the work as well.”
The booth house was complete with a claw machine game. On the couple’s first day living there, through some miracle, their baby was won via that very claw machine. “We were hoping to have twins, but in true Booth fashion, the machine broke down after one use,” added Tricia. “It really is a shame that all the other potential babies were left trapped inside it forever. But that’s life, I guess.”
Here’s a little known fact: If you give birth in a booth, your baby gets free tuition at CMU. These parents were intending on using this policy to its fullest. One midwife and a whirlpool bath later, and they had already bought their newborn baby all the textbooks they’ll need for that engineering major. But Tricia was quick to add, “They don’t have to attend CMU. It would be bad to pressure them.”
However, the relationship went about as smoothly as a buggy ride. There were recurring arguments about the fact that Bill kept coming home covered in asbestos from other booths. And thus, one week after the baby was born, their marriage fell apart and they dismantled the house. Luckily, they didn’t need to worry about custody issues—after a brief legal consultation, they dismantled the baby as well.