Lori and George Schappell obituary, oldest conjoined twins (2024)

When Lori and George Schappell were born their doctor doubted they would survive a year. They were conjoined twins, their skulls fused along the left-hand side of their foreheads so they faced in opposite directions. The surgical expertise required to separate craniopagus twins did not exist. George, moreover, had spina bifida, meaning he could not walk.

The doctor was spectacularly wrong. The pair lived to 62, by which time they were the oldest living conjoined twins. More than that, they managed to lead happy, fulfilled and independent lives.

George, who was born a girl, became an award-winning country singer and publicly identified as a man at the age of 46. That made the Schappells the first same-sex conjoined twins to identify as different genders.

Lori worked, had boyfriends and won prizes for ten-pin bowling. They lived in their own flat, kept pets, and visited London to celebrate their 50th birthdays.

The twins never railed against their fate. They never complained of having to do absolutely everything together, every minute of every day of their lives, though they had different interests and personalities. “There are good days and bad days. So what?” said George. “This is what we know. We don’t hate it. We live it every day. I don’t sit around questioning it, or asking myself what I could do differently if I was separated.”

Although their brains were not fused they never considered separation, even after the operation became at least theoretically possible. “I don’t believe in separation. I think you’re messing with God’s work,” Lori would say. “Why fix what’s not broken?” George would ask.

The twins were born Lori and Dori Schappell in 1961 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Their parents, Franklin and Ruth, were loving and religious and had six other children.

At an early age the twins were put in an institution for the mentally impaired in the nearby town of Hamburg. That was “very unfair”, Lori told the BBC in 2005. “Our parents didn’t want it at all. They were against it, but the courts ruled that they wouldn’t be able to take care of us.”

They stayed in the institution for more than 20 years, though they performed well at the local high school. Then they met Ginny Thornburg, wife of Richard Thornburg, governor of Pennsylvania. She realised they were not remotely impaired and managed to move them out.

They lived in a student hall of residence while studying at the Hiram G Andrews technical college in Elim, Pennsylvania, then moved into their own flat on the 15th floor of a high-rise block for the elderly in Reading. There they had their own rooms, the “visitor” remaining silent while the other enjoyed some privacy. Dori preferred to shower in the morning, Lori in the evening, using the shower curtain to divide them. They preferred the pronoun “I” to “we”.

Of necessity they made endless compromises for each other. Dori was the one who wanted to go to college. Later Lori went to work in a hospital laundry for several years. As she worked, her twin would sit silently reading on the improvised wheeled stool that Lori used to push her around.

In the mid-1990s Lori gave up her job as Dori pursued a career as a country singer. Disliking their rhyming names, she adopted the name Reba, after the country singer Reba McEntire, and enjoyed some success.

She won a Los Angeles Music Award for the best new country artist in 1997. Performing across the United States, and in Germany and Japan, Reba sang the song Fear of Being Alone in the 2003 film Stuck on You, a comedy about fictitious conjoined twins starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear.

As Reba performed, Lori sat silently on the stage, trying to be invisible. The audience “don’t see me there. It’s like there’s a blanket over me because I’m quiet and don’t make a noise,” she said.

The twins had very different personalities. An interviewer for New York magazine wrote: “Reba’s book smart, Lori’s street smart. Reba’s butch, Lori’s fem. Lori’s the homemaker, Reba’s the career woman. Reba’s the tightwad, Lori’s the spendthrift (who likes nothing more than walking through a mall).”

Then, in 2007, Reba provided further evidence of their very different personalities by identifying as a man and asking to be called George. “I have known from a very young age that I should have been a boy,” he said. “It was so tough, but I was getting older and I simply didn’t want to live a lie.”

The twins were not self-conscious. They were used to being stared at. They answered questions from curious strangers. Earlier in their lives they appeared in documentaries, and on shows hosted by the likes of Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and Maury Povich. In 2004 they acted in an episode of the television series Nip/Tuck. They appeared at the grand opening of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium in Times Square, New York.

Lori, particularly, felt it was important to show that conjoined twins were no different from anyone else, but by 2002 an interviewer for the Los Angeles Times was reporting that “they now shy away from the media, saying there have been too many questions about sex and too many stories that left them feeling exploited by the modern version of a travelling sideshow”.

Sex was inevitably raised in almost every interview. Lori had several boyfriends. “When she was out on a date I was not there,” George explained on The Jerry Springer Show. “I was there bodily [but] I didn’t look at anything or even say anything. It was like I wasn’t there.”

Lori agreed: “You really forget she’s there, you really do. She’s in her own little world and she doesn’t bother me from the time I start a date until it ends.” She added: “I’ve been out with men but as for anything besides cuddling and kissing I won’t go further. I want marriage and children and will only give up my virginity on my wedding night.”

If there was a sadness in Lori’s life it was that she never did marry. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that she was once engaged, but her fiancé died in a car crash.

Lori and George Schappell, conjoined twins, were born on September 18, 1961. They died of undisclosed causes on April 7, 2024, aged 62