Lori and George Schappell, craniopagus twins who were born on 18th September 1961, passed away at the age of 62 on April 7th, 2024. Craniopagus twins, or twins conjoined at the head—a rare condition—, the Schappells outlived their anticipated lifespan and were acknowledged as the second-oldest of such twins by the Guinness World Records.
The twins were attached at their foreheads, looking in different directions. While Lori was physically capable and took care of George, who suffered from spina bifida and chose the name Reba in the 1990s, inspired by the famed country singer Reba McEntire. Later in his life, he identified as a transgender man.
Despite their physical connection, the twins professed their individuality emphatically. “We are two separate entities who entered the world connected at one bodily point,” Lori expressed in a brief ITV documentary in 1997. She pointed out that people needed to realise their conjoined condition was a birth circumstance, not their entire identity.
During the 1990s, Lori was employed at a hospital laundry service and enjoyed the sport of bowling. Reba, on the other hand, performed country music in the US and overseas. Reba’s musical career boasted of a Los Angeles Music Award for the best new country artist in 1997 and a credit in the 2003 film Stuck on You for singing The Fear of Being Alone.
The twins respected each other’s interests. Reba mentioned in a 2006 BBC Radio interview that, when he performed, Lori was like an onstage fan, hidden under a blanket to avoid distraction.
When they were young, the twins were sent to an institution for the intellectually disabled—although they weren’t intellectually impaired, according to a New York magazine article from 2005. Instead, they assisted the institute’s staff in tending to other children.
Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, the Schappell twins were two amongst eight children of Franklin and Ruth Schappell. Their physician predicted they wouldn’t live past their initial year, a prediction continually extended as each year they proved him wrong. In a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lori, one half of the twins, mentioned they wouldn’t believe their survival had they lived to see them at 41.
In their early stages of life, they found themselves in an institution for the intellectually impaired, in Reading. Despite not having any intellectual disabilities, Weissbrod, the director of their 2000 documentary, mentioned they assisted the caregivers at the institution with tasks such as bedding arrangement and feeding other kids.
For over two decades, they remained institutionalised until the path-crossing meeting with Mrs Ginny Thornburgh, the wife of Pennsylvania’s governor, in the 1980s. As a fierce advocate for disabled individuals, her influence led to the shutdown of several state institutions for developmentally disabled persons by her governor husband.
The father of the twins, their sisters; Denise Schappell, Brenda Zellers, and Patti Cahill; and their brothers; Rodney, Dennis, and Gregory, are all surviving kin. Their mother sadly passed away in 2019. The twin sisters revealed that they had no desire to be surgically separated, nor to have been born separately. Physicians had suggested that the death of one twin would inevitably result in a rapid decline of the other.
Lori openly shared with ITV, “Our parents ingrained in us that God created us conjoined for a reason,” acknowledging their parents’ influence from a young age.