Few Have Seen Fischer Quins

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30856, 15 September 1965, Page 2

Few Have Seen Fischer Quins

Pre»» Assn —Copyright) ABERDEEN (South Dakota), Sept. 15.

A traveller driving into Aberdeen from the east sees a big billboard that reads: ‘Welcome to Aberdeen, home of —” Not until he gets near the billboard can he see the rest of it: “ —Fischer quins.”

A lush field of corn blocks out this reference to Aberdeen’s five most famous inhabitants, who reached their second birthday yesterday, writes George Moses, of the Associated Press.

The quin-eclipsing corn is an odd but apt symbol of the kind of adjustment this northeastern South Dakota city of 25.000 has made to the Fischers. Aberdeen became a famous town the morning that James Andrew. Mary Margaret, MarsMagdalene, Mary Catherine, and Mary Ann were born to Andrew J. Fischer, then a 76 dollars a week shipping clerk, and his wife Mary Ann.

St. Luke’s, the red brick hospital that kept the youngsters alive in their first critical days, became the eye of a hurricane of scrambling reporters. And there were those in Aberdeen, as there would be in any town, who saw fortune along with fame ... an eager world beating a lucrative path to the quins’ door. But, as the quins turn a healthy, happy and normal-as-possible two, there is no path and no door.

Further, the birthday party was a private one, behind the doors of the 17-room, 100.000 dollars ranch home a mile south-west of Aberdeen which the quins made possible. A year ago Aberdeen folks

—most of whom have not to this day seen the quins—might have wished for a public whoop-up. Now Aberdeen is resigned to, adjusted to, or sympathetic to—depending on who is doing the talking—the wall of privacy behind which the Fischers have retreated. Whatever there may have been of early dreams of easy tourist dollars, lured to Aberdeen by the quins, have vanished. If the quins have made even a small bulge in the Aberdeen economy, it is not apparent to the casual visitor. The four little girls and their brother have never been put on public display. Mrs Fischer occasionally takes them along when she does an errand downtown, but it is a

rare sight, and they stay in the car.

“I saw them once,” said a girl drug-store clerk. “Mrs Fischer was just pulling away from the kerb, and I almost hit her. They were all in the car.”

A tourist who wants to get as close as he can—and several do—can take a paved highway half a mile south of Aberdeen, and turn west on a gravel road. The two-storey, red and cream Fischer home is easy to spot because no South Dakota farmer would build one that big. Lawsons Send Message (N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Sept 15. The Lawson family sent a cable to the Fischer quins of Aberdeen South Dakota, for their second birthday today. It reads: “Many happy returns and all the best for five birthdays in one. Sam, Ann and Leeann Lawson and the New Zealand quintuplets.” The Lawson quins continue to thrive in the National Women’s Hospital and are expected to go home by the end of the month.