Raleigh identical twins turn 100 on New Year’s Eve and ‘don’t feel any different.’
As identical twins, Alean Chavis and Kathleen Stephenson call each other on the phone 10 times a day — just to catch up.
For a visit, they sit a foot apart on the sofa, wearing matching holly berry blouses and black slacks — both in pearls.
And on New Year’s Eve, they will celebrate their 100th birthdays together in Raleigh, their hometown, where they have hardly spent a day apart.
Their advice for longevity:
“You can’t tell the young people nothing,” said Chavis. “Go to church. Don’t stay out late. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t listen.”
The Guinness Book of World Records lists a pair of Japanese sisters, Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama, as the oldest identical twins in history as of September, when they were 107.
But Raleigh’s twins show no signs of fading, a strength Stephenson credits to “hard work.”
“When you could start walking,” she said, “you had to start farming.”
The twins grew up on a farm that stood on the site of the current Millbrook High School, not far from where Stephenson still lives with an Obama sticker on her front door, though the roads were dirt in the 1920s and church was a buggy ride away.
Their parents, Luther and Bettie Hayes, were sharecroppers, and the twins picked cotton from age 8, tending to cows, pigs, horses and mules. They ate what they produced, and if the twins’ durability isn’t proof enough, three younger sisters — Alease, Mattie and Dallie — are now in their 90s.
“We had good food,” Chavis said. “Wasn’t McDonald’s, Hardee’s. We didn’t have none of that.”
“You had to like it,” Stephenson said. “You didn’t have anything else to do.”
They both married — Stephenson first. They both had children — Stephenson, five, and Chavis, one. They both attend Wake Chapel Church, not far from where they grew up.
They missed each other when the pandemic struck, forcing them to separate.
And for their birthday, they will wave as the cars pass for a drive-thru celebration at Wake Chapel — toasting the friends they have collected.
They reflect on another birthday together, still connected in the city whose population they have watched multiply by 20.
“I don’t feel any different,” Chavis said, adding, “We wish we were 50.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 4:37 PM.