home

July 9, 2010

Celebrating 80 years ...

The headline for the photos in the Aug. 10, 1962, edition of the Jewish Western Bulletin read, “First pictures of quadruplets at one day of age.” They were identified as “Babies (left to right): Girl – 5 lbs., 7 ozs; Boy – 5 lbs.; Boy – 4 lbs., 15 ozs.; and Girl 4 lbs., 8 ozs.”

Parents Alex and Ruth Becker, whose then two-year-old son Benjamin was practising how to welcome his new siblings home, named their babies Brucyne, Cliff, Stan and Stacey. Sadly, Stan has since passed away, at age 32.

In the lengthy 1962 article, which began on the cover and jumped to a three-column spot on page six, the Beckers were quite open about the challenges of bringing four healthy babies into the world at once. The article mentions, for example, that “strict weight control measures were introduced in order to avoid the dangers of toxemia,” but then adds that the babies’ nourishment requirements “were so great that there arose the danger of serious illness to the mother, who was losing weight rapidly.”

On a lighter note, Alex Becker shared with the Bulletin that he thought his wife and mother-in-law were joking when they told him about the expected quadruplets. “Finally, I made her (Ruth) swear to it, then I believed it,” he said.

The article continues, “‘After that, I prayed very hard for her and the babies,’ said Mr. Becker.

“‘In this day and age, when there is so much bad news, here is a miraculous act, an act of God, to remind people that there are better things.’”

The babies were to be named at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, with the boys taking “the covenant of the Jewish faith as soon as the doctors consider[ed] them strong enough.” After discussion of the logistics of fitting all the new babies into the Becker house, the article concludes that “the expansion in numbers may well require moving into a larger home.”