Six caps, six gowns: Kansas’ first sextuplets prepare to graduate and leave home
Among the many high school seniors in the Wichita area who were cheated out of the end of their school days by coronavirus pandemic are six pretty well-known siblings from Norwich.
The Headrick sextuplets — Grant, Melissa, Ethan, Danielle, Sean and Jaycie — who together make up 22 percent of Norwich High School’s senior class, would have graduated on May 9.
Instead, the six siblings that captivated Kansas and the nation when they were born to Sondra and Eldon Headrick on April 6, 2002, are facing their last few months under the same roof, where the three boys share one room and the three girls share another.
Like many seniors, they didn’t get to experience all of those end-of-school rituals. But their parents did get the chance to make one final bulk purchase: six sets of graduation caps and gowns — white for the girls, red for the boys — that they donned for photos and will likely wear at a formal graduation ceremony planned for sometime this summer.
Scratch that. There’s still one more bulk purchase left.
“We still need cars for them,” Sondra said with a laugh.
But each of the siblings, together nonstop since birth, is preparing to head out into the world as an individual.
Easy-going Ethan, who co-led Norwich High’s engineering club, is headed to Wichita State University to study technical networking. Sean, the serious, self-described “nerd,” will go to Cowley College to study information assurance.
Both Melissa, the social butterfly, and Danielle, artsy and quiet, are going to Hutchinson Community College to study graphic design and animation, respectively. Jaycie, the class salutatorian, will study elementary education at Pratt Community College.
And Grant — the boundary-pusher and the most outspoken of the siblings — plans to go to college but has decided to keep working at White’s Foodliner in Kingman while he decides exactly what he wants to do.
Meanwhile, mom and dad are preparing to move quickly from a house filled with eight people to one that will likely be pretty quiet, with only Ethan planning to live at home while he attends college.
What will they do with all that time, peace and quiet?
They can’t really imagine it, the Headrick parents say, and admit they probably won’t have much extra time. Sondra and Eldon work two jobs each and will keep doing so. They spent $30,000 for braces for six, and now they’re paying for college.
But the kids, who 18 years ago used to run her ragged with diaper changes and feedings and screaming, are easy now, for the most part, Sondra said.
She’s going to miss having them around.
“I do like this age right now because we can have conversations, and it’s a fun age for them,” she said. “But I’m looking forward to seeing what the future brings for them.”
Late-night chats
Back in 2001, Sondra and Eldon Headrick were a young couple wanting to provide a sibling for their then-3-year-old daughter, Aubrianna. They went to Dr. David Grainger, a Wichita fertility specialist, and on Sept. 12, 2001, the couple learned Sondra was pregnant with sextuplets.
For weeks, they weren’t sure what to do, they told The Eagle at the time. The pregnancy was risky, but they didn’t like the thought of eliminating some of the fetuses to give the others a better chance. Sondra had a dream one night of six healthy, screaming babies, and her mind was made up.
Her pregnancy lasted 31 weeks and one day, and the couple welcomed three healthy boys and three healthy girls, each weighing between 2 pounds, 10 ounces, and 3 pounds, 11 ounces. They were the first sextuplets born in Kansas history, and they garnered national attention, lots of gifts and even an appearance on a national talk show when they were 7 months old.
Wichita Eagle staffers were there for the sextuplets’ birth, and readers were updated when the kids turned 4, 7 and 10.
For Sondra and Eldon, the sextuplets’ childhood was a demanding, expensive blur, and it went by quickly.
“Quicker than you might think,” Sondra said.
Now all 18, the siblings, say they don’t remember much of their early days of celebrity. A few of them can recall little flashes, like The Eagle coming to document their first day of school. But their friends and neighbors in Norwich stopped being impressed years ago.
“Most people find it interesting,” Grant said. “But we really don’t get that much attention from it right now. It’s not a big thing.”
The siblings say they’re close, but they didn’t all run around together in high school. Sean, Ethan, Melissa and Danielle were in the same friend group, but Grant and Jaycie both went their own ways.
Though Grant was the most rebellious of the six, Eldon says, no one was more rebellious than big sister Aubrianna, who now lives in Wichita on her own.
“We learned a lot from her,” Melissa says with a mischievous smile.
“She’s the reason for the rules,” Eldon adds.
Though life could get claustrophobic in their house — causing Grant to make the living room his bedroom over the past several months — the siblings admit they’ll miss each other’s company. They hope they’ll all stay close and talk often.
“I’ll really miss the late-night chats with my sisters,” Melissa said.
The siblings, who were all adopted by fertility specialist Dr. Grainger on the Norwich “adopt-a-senior” Facebook page, said they’re ready to get out and start their own lives.
And maybe, someday, their own families.
Do any of them wish for big families?
All quickly shake their heads no, and Grant speaks for the group.
“I already have a big family.”
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