TWINSBURG, Ohio (AP) — Once just a simple ceremony honoring twin brothers, the Twins Days festival has doubled and doubled and doubled — literally.
Now in its 25th year, the annual event is expected to attract 3,000 sets of twins, triplets and quadruplets to this city just southeast of Cleveland.
"I had no idea it would be this big," Tom Garaghan, who was parade marshal for the first festival in 1976, said Thursday. "I thought, maybe, it would go to 150, 200 twins. The twins are who made it big."
The 1995 event drew 2,798 sets, earning a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's largest gathering of twins. But the event was dethroned last November when 3,961 pairs converged in Taipei, Taiwan.
The annual celebration began in 1976, when 36 pairs of twins gathered to honor Aaron and Moses Wilcox with a parade. Originally called Millsville, the town was renamed for the brothers.
The first celebration almost became the last. "In 1977, the idea of hosting a festival fell dormant until about May," said Andrew Miller, executive director of the festival committee and father of twins. "Then a group of planners decided they'd better do something because it would be hard to get re-established in the future."
The festival was opened to the public in 1978, drawing researchers and scientists interested in genetic research.
This year's celebration begins Friday and runs through Sunday.
LaVona and LaVelda Richmond, of Aurora, Ill., have come to the festival every year since 1977, when they first visited while honeymooning with their husbands, twin brothers Alwin and Arthur.
Dressed in matching straw hats adorned with silk flowers, the 66-year-old twin sisters were back in town Thursday.
"It's a place to come and let your hair down," LaVona Richmond said. "And no one will criticize you for who you are, whether you look alike or dress differently."
On the Net: www.twinsdays.org