Clearbrook's Kingery twins an inseparable duo for 73 years (with video) 

They share the same wispy hairstyle, the same clothes, the same sticky accent - everything the same, down to their silver anklets and wedding bands.

Janice Beheler and Janette Gibson may no longer share the same surname, but their local reputation as the Kingery Twins remains - an identical pairing long established from childhood stints at the Roanoke Farmers Market, where they learned to make change in nickels and dimes.

Their sister-in-law, Pam Kingery, grew up just down Back Creek Road from the twins. She described them simply as "hoots." When asked what made them tick, she avoided the question wholesale.

"Honey, you let them tell you all about it," she said, almost mischievously. "You're in for a treat. It's really something."

The road to the twins' homes sprints uphill, rounding a stone residence with front-lawn oaks, and skipping onward to the top where a pair of red-brick ranch houses sit side by side, each the mirror image of the other. And save for the forgetful bird that periodically flies smack into Janice's patio door, everything matches: the rose bushes, the cement statuettes, even the trickling garden pools next to their front stoops.

Janice lives on the right, Janette on the left. Around them, the old plots of the Kingerys' Clearbrook land have built up through the years into new houses and a landscape of budding bushes and flower patches. Their children live next door, and the three Kingery brothers live within shouting distance back down the hill.

Three knocks and Janice emerges from her home with a warm smile.

"Come on in," she says, scooping up a cordless phone. "I'll call Janette."

Within moments the two are sitting askew on a squishy sofa, facing each other with slight smiles, silver hair placed just so, hands resting peacefully on their knees.

They've shared the past 73 years as an inseparable duo. They are their own routines. At night, Janette picks an outfit for the next day, then walks next door to pull the same clothes from Janice's identical walk-in closets.

"See, a lot of people don't want nothing connected to nobody," Janette said. "They just want to be completely different."

"But me and Janette, it's just always seemed like that's what we want to be - close," Janice said. "She's my best friend."

The pair was born on a frigid December afternoon in 1939 in an old log cabin on the same hill on which they live today. There was no running water and no electricity, only a heavy potbellied stove to keep them warm. Janice came first, by 20 minutes. Her sister was a surprise.

The pair recalled their mother's stories, in which Opal Kingery once checked on her sleeping daughters to find snow had sifted through cracks in the cabin walls and had fallen onto their blankets. So she held them through the nights next to the stove.

"She always called us her little turkeys," Janice said.

Never wealthy, Opal Kingery often made the clothing her daughters would wear, opting for identical fabrics to save money. It was a tradition that stuck through their youth and into adolescence.

"See, when we were dating we would always have to double date because Mama wouldn't let us go by ourselves," Janette said. "We'd go to the drive-in, and while the boys would go to the concession stand, we'd switch on 'em. And when they'd come back -"

"They never knew!" Janice finished. "Oh, it's fun being twins. We used to be characters."

They looked at each other and smiled - memories of their 20s, working at the Kingery Country Store, and jetting side by side down U.S. 220 in matching flame-red Monte Carlos racing through their minds.

Along the way, the twins married best friends. And though Janice is now a widow, Billy Gibson can still recall the day he first met them.

"When I first saw them, I said, ‘I'm going to marry one of those girls,' " Gibson said. "So, I got Janette and we've been together 50-some years now and I don't regret a thing."

He acclimated to the identical lifestyle, one in which it was common to buy nearly two of everything.

"I usually give in to them," he said, laughing. "It hasn't been too bad."

It was their mother who forged the bond that has kept the twins together, neighbors and relatives said, the gentle spirit of a woman who, above all else, preached the importance of family. Opal Kingery died in 1992.

"Their mother instilled in them to protect, love and watch over one another," Pam Kingery said. "It was just as if when she got real sick and was passing, that she said, ‘Y'all take care of one another.' "

And they did.

When Janice suffered a recent stroke and struggled with the temporary loss of her sight, it was Janette by her side at every moment.

"For six weeks I was totally blind, and it's awful," said Janice. "I could see daylight and I could see darkness, that's all I could see. That's an awful feeling, to be blind and to be lost. Everywhere I went was a dead end."

So Janette was her light. While friends and family prayed for a strong recovery, it was Janette who rose each morning long before 7 a.m. to drive to Janice's temporary care facility to bathe and feed her sister. She changed her sheets, talked her through the days until a life atop their hill became a reality again.

Janette got up from the sofa and pulled an old painting from a nearby cupboard. It was by P. Buckley Moss, an artist known for her portrayals of rural life in Virginia.

The scene: the Roanoke market, featuring an Amish man selling his wares near the corner of Market Street and Campbell Avenue. It was the same Amish man who neighbored the sisters' own booth.

Janette tapped at the corner of the painting, where two little girls dressed in identical gray skirts toddled along, holding hands, at the bottom of the scene.

Decades later, passers-by can still find the pair working the market on weekends, luring customers to boxes of fresh peaches using their identical auras and boisterous laughs.

Their 67-year-old brother, Randy Kingery, highlighted the twins' bond, and even went so far as to suggest his sisters share a sixth sense.

"It seems like they're almost one," he mused. "Because if one of them gets sick the other one feels it. Being twins, and identical like they are, it's just born in them. It's in their genes to be alike, to look alike, and to almost act alike."

Weather Journal

3 hours ago

1. 41-vehicle wreck ties up traffic Sunday on I-81 in Rockbridge County 

2. Virginia Tech football roster has holes on picture day

3. Medicare penalties hit hospitals in Roanoke, New River Valleys

4. Microfestivus beer event gets downtown Roanoke hopping 

5. McFarling: 2 little numbers are a big hurdle for Virginia Tech football 

6. DAN CASEY: Copter cost still stirring up dust

7. Arrest made in case of missing Nelson County teen

8. Roanoke farmers markets making local foods more accessible

9. Virginia attorney general's office grows under Ken Cuccinelli 

10. Man's drowning is 5th in Lynchburg area