Ask Lani Pettit if she is disappointed that she isn't a twin, and “I don't know” are the first words out of her mouth. But her denial seems undeniably lacking. Meanwhile, behind Lani, her sister Julie is smiling and nodding yes, yes, yes to the same question.
Caught redhanded, Lani smiles and says, well, maybe, just maybe, she might be a little disappointed. But pointing to younger-but-taller sister Julie, Lani adds: “I think we grew up almost like twins. We always did everything together. Everybody asked if we were twins because we were so alike and about the same height.”
Such is the life of Sioux City's own “supertwinologist,” a word she coined to describe her fascination with twins, triplets, quads, quints and every other kind of multiple birth on record. And eventually, she earned the title “honorary twin,” for her work with twins.
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“Yeah, I was an honorary twin when they had an Iowa Twins Convention. They said that I was probably a reincarnation of the sixth quint,” she said
That “sixth quint” refers, of course, to the famed Dionne Quintuplets who came into this world on May 28, 1934, in Ontario, Canada. A sixth embryo miscarried early in the mother's pregnancy.
It was Lani's fascination with the Dionnes as a child in the 1950s after her mother told her about them that spurred her to become a collector and expert in the subject of multiples. They were the first known quintuplets ever to have survived their infancy.
“I started collecting them in the late '50s when I was in junior high – newspaper clippings and advertisements,” she said. “And I have dolls, paper dolls and a radio, spoons and dishes and I actually have some clothing that they really wore.”
That still-working, little white 1940s radio with Dionne Quint decals on both sides is considered a valuable souvenir. She also has a hair bow from the quints, a recording of their young voices, home movies of the family and lots of photos. “It was fun for me to go up there and see where all that was,” she said.
As a child, Lani went to the Sioux City Public Library to unearth everything she could about the Dionnes, copying in her notebooks the newspaper and magazine articles by hand, one by one, because they didn't have photocopy machines back then.
“That was the start of it. But probably by about 1965, I began to meet families that had multiple births, like the Sudbeck triplets of Sioux City. And there was a family in Minnesota with identical (adopted) Korean quadruplets,” she said.
She continued to collect materials and take photos of multiples. “I counted up all the sets of multiples that I have photographed, and it's well over 200 sets,” she said.
She has enough research material collected over the years to start her own museum, or write a book, but she has declined to do either. She's happy just meeting more multiples ... and thrilled to be the godmother of triplets.
While she never met the Dionne Quints, Lani made a pilgrimage to their hometown last year, checking out the Quintland Museum there, the hospital built to care for the quints, their original farm home and the mansion they built later for the family. All were booming tourist sites back in the 1930s and '40s, with the quints available for public viewing.
What made the Dionnes special was that they were five identical quintuplets. The odds of that happening again haven't increased in recent years despite the explosion of multiple births thanks to fertility drugs, she said.
“Twins are like one in every 87 births. Natural,” she said. “Spontaneous, they call it. Twins. And then you go like 87 times 87. That's 7,550. It's how frequently triplets are. And then times 87 is quads. And then times 87 is quints. It's like maybe one in 57 million. And they're all identical, which is even rarer than that. And they were the first set that ever survived.”
Pettit used to speak at Mothers of Twins conventions and other meetings. She attended the Twins Picnics that Sioux City used to have in the 1970s and even got to know the Sioux City's since-grown Sudbeck triplets.
“Some of these families, I've gone to their weddings. They've just been like family to me,” she said, pointing to the Fischer quints born in Aberdeen, S.D., in 1963 – and most especially, the identical Merino triplets, her goddaughters from Sioux City who moved to Norfolk, Neb., where they graduated from high school last year.
“The Merino triplets have occupied much of my time over the past 18 years, helping raise them,” she said. “While they were small, I took them places like the art center, museum, mall. We went to have portraits taken regularly, even though I took hundreds of my own photos of them. They went to church with me regularly. Often they stayed overnight and once I babysat them for a week. We are very close and keep in touch by phone or Facebook.”
Among the more interesting multiples she met were Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, the world's oldest living set of conjoined twins and the world's only adult male conjoined twins. She met the Galyons, who are joined from the sternum to the groin, when they came to town with a carnival. Often, Siamese twins, as they are also called, made a living on the carnival circuit, and the Galyons are no exception.
“It's interesting 'cause that's really how the other identicals would start out,” she said of conjoined twins. “If they wouldn't have started the splitting process quite so late, if they had waited a bit longer, two or three days or whatever it is to split into two, they might stay stuck together.”
When meeting twins or triplets, Lani said she enjoys trying to tell one from the other. When they are identicals, it is nearly impossible. And even fraternal twins can present a real challenge sometimes. “But like the (Merino) triplets, I know them so well, I'm kind of good at it but ... not always,” she said. “Even their mom will get them mixed up, too. And one time, I saw them get each other mixed up. You'd think they'd be perfect at it.”
She never tires of meeting new multiples, though.
“I would really like to meet the quintuplets in Sioux City,” she said of Anna, Brody, Ciara, David and Ella McCormick, the children of Kevin and Jodi McCormick, who were born Oct. 11, 2009, in Omaha. “I've never seen quints before. That would be wonderful if I could get a section on them.”
So when did her interest in twins peak?
“From a teenager to forever,” the supertwinologist said.
