Kansas’ Headrick sextuplets, parents surprised by scholarships and more on ‘Today’ show
Kansas’ grown up Headrick sextuplets — and pretty much every college mascot in the Wichita area — had six minutes in the national spotlight on Tuesday morning when they appeared on NBC’s Today show.
And the family also walked away with a big load of scholarships and other surprise gifts.
The siblings, who were born in Wichita on April 6, 2002, and are still Kansas’ first and only sextuplets, appeared on a segment hosted by Jenna Bush Hager, a “Today” co-host and the daughter of former President George W. Bush.
Using Zoom interviews and the archive of photos that the Wichita Eagle has taken throughout the lives of the sextuplets, who this year graduated from Norwich High School, the show produced a segment about their birth, their lives and their graduation.
And at the end, Bush Hager surprised the family with a trip to Key Largo for parents Sondra and Eldon, $300 gift cards to Kohl’s for each of the siblings and their older sister, Aubrianna, and one-year full scholarships to their chosen colleges for each of the sextuplets — Grant, Melissa, Ethan, Danielle, Sean and Jaycie.
When the segment ended, Bush Hager interviewed the family online from Norwich High School, where they all were gathered and the sextuplets were wearing their graduation gear. The scholarship surprise was delivered along with visits from WuShock, the mascot for Wichita State University, where Ethan will study technical networking.
The mascots for Cowley College, Hutchinson Community College and Pratt Community College, where the other siblings will attend, also made appearances. Pratt and Cowley also offered to give sibling Grant — who is taking a gap year — the same scholarship if he decided to attend next year.
Sondra Headrick said the show contacted her after producers saw The Eagle’s May 17 story about the siblings graduating.
The show first composed a written story about the siblings graduating and posted it online. Then, another producer called wanting to do the segment that aired on Tuesday. Sondra said the family has been in multiple Zoom meetings and had to learn how to do professional lighting in their living room.
The interview that aired on Tuesday morning was filmed last week at the high school, she said.
It’s been a wild summer for the siblings, who will finally get to walk across stage at a graduation ceremony on Saturday at Norwich High’s football stadium.
They were featured in the media frequently when they were first born, but then that stopped and they lived normal lives as they grew up.
Now, they’re starting to understand what that was like, their mother said.
“For them to have all this attention is a lot different and pretty amazing,” she said. “Here in Norwich, they’re normal kids, and it’s no big deal. This is something new to them.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 1:29 PM.
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