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Roosevelt twins were two among thousands

In the summer of 1995, I worked a three month internship at The Warroad Pioneer, which I'm sorry to say has since ceased operation. This was the first professional newspaper that I worked for in my career, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I had only worked at Bemidji State University's newspaper for about a year and half before landing the internship. At The Pioneer I gained experience in sports, feature, beat and government reporting. I designed pages, took and developed photographs and was responsible for community relations. The best part is that I remain friends with the owners nearly 30 years later.



Aug 29, 1995


By Devlyn Brooks


For Rhonda Doyle, of Roosevelt, and Renae Pfeiffer, of Warroad, looking alike is not something new to them. They are twins who are now 25 years old. However, Doyle and Pfeiffer attended a convention on Aug. 4-6 which made them think differently about being twins.


They attended the 20th anniversary "Twins Days Festival" in Twinsburg, Ohio, and Doyle said that it was eerie to see so many sets of people who looked alike.


The "Twins Days Festival" is said to be the largest gathering of twins in the world, and is held once a year to honor those in the world who are twins. For 20 years, twins have been making the trip to the event to celebrate with others who were born twins like themselves.


There are games and contests held; there is an annual parade called the "Double Take" Parade; a 5K race is held to raise money for Huntington's Disease; and every year a huge group photo is taken of all the twins who attended the event.


Doyle and Pfeiffer said that they did not participate in any of the contests or twins games that were held, but did do a lot of observing at the convention.


"We looked at a lot of booths," Pfeiffer said. "But we didn't look at them all. There were too many."


The largest attendance at the convention was in 1991 when 2,761 sets of twins showed up to celebrate with other twins. In 1994, there were 2,680 sets of twins there, and this year's numbers haven't been released yet.


Doyle said that they also saw many sets of triplets, some quadruplets and even a set of quintuplets. She said that the bigger the sets got, the less the people looked the same. However, they saw three sets of look-alike quadruplets that had their picture taken together.


Twins young and old attend the festival. Doyle said they saw an 87-year-old pair of twins who were there for the first time. They also saw a pair of twins who were 6 weeks old.


Doyle said that once when they were shopping, a lady came up to the twins and asked if she could take their picture. The two said, "Sure." They said they figured she was just taking pictures of some of the twins who were there.


As if being born looking alike is not rare enough, the twins were born to a mother who was a twin herself. This is a rare occurrence, the twins' mother Marlin Ravndalen said.


"We couldn't tell them apart when they were born so we kept the hospital bracelets on until they outgrew them," Ravndalen said.


Another trick that the twin's parents used to tell them apart was that Renae had two cowlicks on the back of her head, and Rhonda had one.


This, however, didn't solve all the confusion that was caused by having twins.


"One time we fed the same baby twice," Ravndalen said. "And another time I had washed the twins up because we were going to town. On the way into town, I looked back and I saw one with a dirty face. I had washed the same face twice."


Ravndalen said that she would like to some day go to the convention with her sister and daughters. The two sets of twins together.


"That would be fun," she said.


Renae and Rhonda are the daughters of Marlin and Robert Ravndalen of Roosevelt.



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