Hi Dave,
Somewhere in this debate, a real problem with your code has not been pointed out. You should never write code that calls Init programatically. Init is an event that occurs automatically when the object is instantiated. The fact that you need to call it should point out to you that this implementation is begging for a custom method. Also, you can pass the birthdate to the Init method in the NewObject function. This would be more correct and efficient than manually calling the Init.