On the very first Wednesday morning of February in 1939, Ellis Badgett caught the elevator at a Texas hospital, St. Mary's Infirmary. When he got to his wife's room, he saw a newspaper photographer, Herbert Winters, on the top of a step ladder with his Speed Graphic camera aimed through the room's transom. He was snapping pictures.
Two of the nuns were steading his ladder while doctors were going in and out of the room.
That's when Mr. Badgett learned that his wife had just become the 1 in 670 thousand cases where a mom gives birth to quadruplets. They named theirs Joan, Joyce, Jeraldine and Jeanette and within moments they were nation-wide celebrities.
Imagine the publicity the Badgett Quads would bring to the Texas. The city of Galveston, where they were born, gave them a brand new, two-story home on Broadway. Their mother had a postcard printed of them and put them in all of the souvenir stores. They sold like hot cakes.
The largest publisher of children's materials in the world, Saalfield, bought the license to sell Badgett Quad paper dolls. You'll find a set today in Kent State University's archives.
Baylor University gave them scholarships; one of the milk companies hired them to be in their magazine and newspaper ads. The Girl Scouts made them honorary members. And when they were 6, Texas Governor Coke Stevenson made them members of the famous Kilgore Junior College Rangerettes.
And I almost forgot to tell you. When entertainers Phil Harris and Alice Faye were married in Sam Maceo's hotel apartment, guess who the flower girls were?
Joan, Joyce, Jeraldine and Jeanette graduated from high school in the late ‘50s. Fortunately by then, their celebrity had waned. They were able to then have normal lives. They married. Two stayed in Galveston. Two moved to Dallas. Joan, who had been a public school librarian for many years, died a few days after her 63rd birthday.
The famous donated home has changed hands a number of times.
I went to school with Joan, Joyce, Jeraldine and Jeanette Badgett. I wish you could have seen them then. They sure were good lookin'.
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