Identical Twins

We're celebrating the annual Twins Days festival by spotlighting a few sets of identical twins.

Every year since 1976, the town of Twinsburg, Ohio has hosted Twins Days, the largest annual gathering of twins in the world. As thousands of twins, triplets, quads and other multiples from the United States and beyond gather to celebrate their unique bonds, we're honoring twins by spotlighting a few identical twins who've died in recent months. These sibling pairs shared everything, starting with their DNA.

Identical twins Julian and Adrian Riester served as Franciscan monks for 65 years — 35 of them at St. Bonaventure University. In 2008, they retired to St. Anthony Friary in St. Petersburg, Florida, and they died three years later, just hours apart.

obituary he wrote about them for the St. Petersburg Times, reporter Andrew Meacham noted that the Riesters "were more than just brothers and more than just identical twins." They made the same choices — from deciding to commit their lives to the Catholic church following a visit to the Vatican as high school students, to ordering the same food at restaurants.

"The brothers attended St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, and might have entered the draft in the later part of World War II. They were turned down because of their eyesight, according to St. Bonaventure — one with a bad left eye, the other a bad right eye."

The Riesters are not the only twins who had more than their DNA in common.

June "Shorty" Stow and her identical twin sister Jean Shetler Jones both graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, where they met their husbands (both of whom were future doctors). Both Stow’s obituary in the Lansing (Michigan) State Journal and Jones’s in the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal indicate that each sister "was a dedicated volunteer and enjoyed affiliation with many community organizations."

This post was contributed by Alana Baranick, a freelance obituary writer. She was the director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers and chief author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers before she passed away in 2015.