Twins’ 100th birthday sorrow
Jean and Joan were inseparable until the end. For one, the end came three days shy of their centenary birthday
As the sun from the window in her Christchurch apartment lit her face, Jean Fergusson deftly swung her left leg onto the waist-high kitchen table.
It was a bright morning earlier this month and the 99-year-old was demonstrating a scene first played out in her doctor’s office.
‘‘When I went to renew my driver licence recently, my doctor asked how high I could lift my leg, so I put it up on the desk.’’
Just weeks shy of her 100th birthday, Jean had advised via text – complete with appropriate emoji – that she could squeeze an interview into her schedule after popping to the mall for coffee, a trip to her accountant’s office and a fiercely competitive game of mahjong.
Two doors down, Jean’s identical twin sister, Joan, was busy too.
‘‘The Fergusson twins, that’s what everyone calls us,’’ Jean said.
‘‘We were born in Christchurch. We were a family of eight children, we had five older siblings and a younger brother. The sister before us was 10 years older. The three of us younger ones were thick as thieves.’’
On May 7, the day of her birthday party and just three days shy of her 100th birthday on Tuesday, Jean died in hospital.
When the twins were born prematurely at Nurse Duncan’s private nursing home on May 10, 1922, they weren’t given much chance of survival.
But they lived, and were taken home by their parents, Henry Charles and Clara Annie Fergusson, to their family home on the corner of Victoria St and Salisbury St.
Wrapped in ‘‘a special orange suit’’ by the doctor – their only garment for the first six months – they were placed into a deepdrawer in their parents’ wardrobe.
‘‘That’s what they did in those days, not many twins survived. Think of what my mother would have had to do every day, looking after the children and washing the clothes by hand,’’ Jean said.
‘‘On our first day at school, which I remember very clearly,Joan and I arrived to start at the ‘normal’ school, and there was another set of identical twins, Peter and Paul starting that day too. We four became firm friends.’’
The girls continued their education with ‘‘many enjoyable times’’ at Christchurch Girls High School, where they wore name badges, before leaving in 1939.
The sporty pair were competitive, and particularly loved to play tennis.
The fashionable Fergusson twins enjoyed wearing matching clothes right up until their 20s, and beyond.
‘‘We always wore the same things, even if we weren’t trying to, we would just appear in the same clothes but in different colours. Even during the Depression when it was difficult to get material.
‘‘I didn’t like the Depression . . . you ate whatever was placed on the table in front of you that day, no matter what it was. Our mother made us matching clothes out of the hand-me-downs from our older sisters.’’
Growing up 100 years ago was ‘‘completely different’’.
‘‘We fought infantile paralysis, influenza, whooping cough – there were no injections, you had to live through . . . chickenpox, measles.’’
Jean doesn’t have to think hard when asked about the worst experience of her life.
‘‘That would be when we were 27 and Joan got married and moved to Invercargill. It was the first time we were separated. People don’t understand with twins . . . Sisters are sisters. Twins share everything from
the day they are born.’’
Joan has four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 greatgrandchildren, including three sets of twins.
Her daughters Gillian and Jeanette described the sisters as ‘‘best friends’’ and said their mother was a fun and loving woman who enjoyed sports and was well known for her baking and community work.
Joan married Graham Melhop, the son of H.E. Melhop whose wellknown engineering firm in Invercargill was responsible for starting the Shotover Jet in Queenstown. Her youngest son, Brent Melhop, said she raised her children with the same principles instilled in her by her parents.
‘‘Three weeks after she married, Joan’s husband sent her home for a visit because she was so homesick,’’ recalled Jean. ‘‘I stayed in Christchurch and cared for our mother.’’
When she was 42, Jean married a Canadian geologist.
‘‘Mum said I had to think of myself, it was getting near her time. I moved to Canada, Edmonton. I never had any children of my own.’’
She learned to drive ‘‘on the wrong side’’ and took up a job bookkeeping, despite her husband’s disapproval.
‘‘My husband didn’t want me to work, but I wanted to learn the life of Canadians, their money systems and way of life. There was a young girl there, Elizabeth, she was 10 and her parents helped us in Canada,’’ said Jean. ‘‘From when she was 10 she always called me the ‘other mother’. Elizabeth is like the daughter I never had, that’s the only way I could put it. Her children and grandchildren call me GK – Grandma Kiwi.’’
After 25 years, Jean and her husband returned home to Christchurch to retire.
‘‘We had only been here three years when he died of cancer.’’
At 90, Jean and Joan moved into neighbouring homes but still lived independently in the retirement complex.
Even at the age of 99, the competitive siblings still squabbled occasionally, Joan acknowledged with a cheeky grin.
‘‘We are like Laurel and Hardy, that’s what Joan said – she is tall, and I am the bigger one,’’ Jean said.
Jean picks up a photo in a gilded frame. ‘‘Come on dear, I will show you something. I can remember this. That’s me and my sister – we were flower girls for our sister’s wedding.’’
Jean holds the photo carefully and her eyes shine with the memories.
At 99, Jean had all her ‘‘own bits’’ – ‘‘no knee replacements or hip replacements or anything like that’’ – and was on no medication.
What’s their secret? ‘‘A giggle, good genes and faith,’’ said Jean. ‘‘I am in His hands. We were raised in a Christian home and when we were growing up, our dad taught us to walk away from an argument, so I have always done that.’’
As I am about to leave, Jean searches for an invitation to her 100th birthday party.
‘‘I like that black and white picture of us two the best, it is us out shopping together last year wearing our caps. It’s us girls together on an adventure.’’
‘‘I didn’t like the Depression . . . you ate whatever was placed on the table in front of you that day . . .’’ Joan Fergusson