Wednesday, May 20, 2009
DAYTON (AP) — Donnie may be older, but Ronnie is taller. Donnie’s a spender, Ronnie’s a miser.
Two men, one life, lived face to face for every minute of their 57 years.
Ronald and Donald Galyon, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living male conjoined twins, have identities as distinct as any two siblings — one serious (Donnie), one happy-go-lucky (Ronnie), disagreeing about some things and correcting each other’s stories.
What Ronnie leaves off, Donnie often begins with, “What he meant to say is ...”
They agree on what’s important, though, including sports — most notably football and their team, the Dallas Cowboys, a loyalty that chagrins their little brother Jim Galyon, who loves the Cincinnati Bengals.
And neither likes the term “conjoined twins.”
“We want to be called Siamese twins,” Donnie said. “The name came from the twins in Siam [Chang and Eng in the early 1800s], and that’s what we are: Siamese twins.”
Joined at the torso, the Galyons have four arms and four legs, separate hearts, lungs and stomachs. Their vital organs join in the digestive tracts, with one lower intestine, one penis and one rectum, over which Donnie has control.
It’s easy to say that the Galyons have defied the odds.
Conjoined twins are thought to be born once in every 50,000 to 200,000 births; half of those are stillborn, and the survival rate for those born alive is somewhere around 25 percent.
“Make sure you get a Guinness Book of World Records this year — we’re in it again,” said Donnie.
After a life on the road, first with the carnival and then with the circus, the Galyons are living out their days in a small home in Dayton, days of television-watching punctuated by occasional breakfasts at the Golden Nugget and dinners at Spaghetti Warehouse.
Age is taking its toll.
Arthritic and sore, the twins have trouble getting around like they used to, and even a trip outside to water their tomato plants is something of an ordeal.
They used to walk places; today they can’t go far without resting, and their custom wheelchair has seen better days.
Earlier this year, a seven-week stay in the hospital frightened their extended family — four brothers, three sisters, a stepmother and half sister, numerous nieces and nephews — though the twins have recovered well.
“I’m going to see to it that they’re independent for as long as possible,” said Jim Galyon, 46.
“Some people might think they should be institutionalized — but I wouldn’t want to live in an institution, would you?”
The twins’ parents, Wesley and Maureen Galyon, already had two children and weren’t expecting twins.
Donnie came first, Ronnie surprising everyone minutes later with his very existence, shocking everyone with his very literal connection to his brother.
“We had a good doctor,” Ronnie says now. “We’re lucky.”
They were born Oct. 28, 1951, at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Dayton. At the time, separation would have been difficult if not impossible; their parents made the decision to let nature take its course.
For the past 57 years, the Galyon twins have thrived, living a sheltered but full life, albeit one skewed by the spotlight of carnival sideshows, circus tents and, too often, curious and rude onlookers.
Polite people are fine, they say — they realize they’re quite a sight. Ignorant comments and cell-phone cameras are a source of irritation, though Ronnie and Donnie are quick to say they were raised to be courteous.
They never went to school: “They thought we’d be a distraction,” Donnie said, though their parents hired a series of women who helped with everyday tasks such as toilet training and learning to tie their shoes. As both men are right-handed, this requires intense coordination.
Even birthday celebrations have been the source of drama: “Oct. 28 — Halloween — you get the idea,” says Jim. “Draw your own conclusions.”
They’ve lived a public life but have avoided turning their home into a tourist attraction. Once, while being followed as they walked back from a shopping trip, they led the strangers to a neighbor’s house instead of their own home. “Our brother taught us well,” said Ronnie.
Their brother taught them everything.
Jim oversees Ronnie and Donnie’s lives with the tenacity and tenderness of a mother wolf — he’s as tough as he is kind to Ronnie and Donnie, ferociously protective without being smothering.
It’s Jim who found Donnie and Ronnie a house in their old neighborhood, down the street from where he was living back in 1991, helping them buy it with the earnings from their days on the road.
It’s Jim who stops by every day, who arranges for a home-care worker’s visits, who takes them to Reds’ and Dragons’ games a couple of times a year, who drives them to restaurants and who fights Medicare to get them a replacement for their old, custom wheelchair (“One wheelchair for two people — it just does not compute with Medicare. They’re not understanding this situation at all,” he says).
And it was Jim who, after getting late-night calls from Ronnie and Donnie about harassment from local high-schoolers, parked his motorcycle in their driveway “and waited.”
“They were terrified,” Jim recalled, noting that police got involved and made a visit to the teens’ school. “The sheriff told the whole school in no uncertain terms that the behavior would not be tolerated and that they would be prosecuted.”
Jim helps his brothers stay as independent as possible, withstanding outside pressure to find some sort of institutionalized setting for them. It’s a role he doesn’t see as heroic, or special: It’s just what he does. Ronnie and Donnie’s six other siblings “care deeply,” Jim says, brushing off questions about how he manages his own family — he has three grown kids of his own; his wife, Mary, has four — a full-time job, and the twins.
“It isn’t easy,” says Mary. “In a lot of ways, it’s like he has two more kids.”
“I don’t do it for anybody else but them,” Jim says. “I always have, and I always will.”
Maybe it’s payback for the summers Jim got to spend with his brothers on the carnival circuit. “All the rides were free,” he said with a smile.
If not for summers on the circuit, Jim probably wouldn’t have seen much of Donnie and Ronnie — theirs was a life spent on the road. After spending 29 months in the hospital, the babies came home and started working.
When the boys were 3, their father made the decision to take them on the carnival circuit as a way to support his growing family. They traveled to Canada and throughout the United States and South America, getting free cotton candy on the midway, baby-sitting carny workers’ kids in their downtime.
Their parents divorced (“They don’t want to talk about that,” Jim warned); their father remarried and moved to Kentucky with his new wife. Both parents are now deceased.
Ronnie and Donnie continued traveling with the circus, managed by and traveling with their brother, Joe, from 1989 to 1991.
“We had fun. After the shows, we’d go out gambling. ... We never did that with Dad,” Donnie said, laughing.
They retired in 1991, moving back to Dayton, where they found another lifelong friend in Glenn Kwiat, a doctor fresh off his residency who thought the “Siamese twins” in his appointment book were a buddy’s practical joke.
“It was a learning curve for everybody,” Kwiat says. “There wasn’t any literature as to treatment as conjoined twins get older — there was a lot about trying to separate them, but nothing on general health care.
“Over the years, things developed not only from a medical standpoint but from a personal standpoint — the connection has been really special.”
Getting around is more of a chore these days. Any walking requires frequent breaks, and a digestive problem earlier this year required a seven-week hospital stay. But Ronnie, whose weight has been an issue, proudly points out that he’s now thinner: “We don’t eat french fries and potato chips anymore,” Donnie said.
“Their goal has always been to live to be the oldest living Siamese twins,” Kwiat said. “Eng and Chang Bunker lived to be 62, and when you calculate it out, they’d beat that mark if they make it to July 4, 2013.
“It’s been a real interesting relationship — definitely a positive one from all aspects,” he continued. “It’s fascinating when you see how they function and cooperate, but also it’s a great psychological study, how they go through life.
It is a life outside an institution, and for that Kwiat credits Jim Galyon.
“Without Jim, this couldn’t have happened,” he said. “He’s the reason they’re able to function out in society. Otherwise they’d have had to be institutionalized.”
The twins themselves bring up the subject of being separated, and whether they’d choose that option if they could.
“No way,” they say simultaneously, pulling out the pendants worn around their necks — two jagged puzzle pieces that together make a whole.
“God made us,” Donnie said. “Let God separate us.”