SIOUX CENTER—If children are a blessing, then twins might be a double portion. At least that might be the opinion of the families of twin sisters Joane and Jeane Zomer, who will celebrate their 90th birthday on Friday, April 4.
Joane lives at Crown Pointe Estates in Sioux Center, while Jeane lives at Riverview Ridge in Rock Valley. Despite the distance, they visit each other on a weekly basis, switching who hosts, a clear sign that their bond hasn’t diminished these many years.
They were born to Rochus and Jennie Schelling, who were farmers a mile west of Lebanon. In fact, they were born in the farmhouse’s bedroom. Without the benefit of ultrasounds, having twins was a surprise for families back then, and that was the case for the Schellings on April 4, 1935.
“I was first, but not very long. All we were ever told was that after one was born, then the doctor did like this,” Jeane said, holding up two fingers to indicate a second baby was coming, too. “Then there was another one.”
They were both born small, and there were fears about whether they would survive.
“There was no electricity in those days, so to keep us warm, they opened up the cookstove oven to keep us warm there,” Jeane said.
Growing up, their experience on the farm was like anyone else’s back then. The family farm had a bit of everything, with crops in the field to tend to and dairy cows, pigs and chickens to take care of at home.
They received their educations up to the eighth-grade at the nearby country school, though Jeane would later go on to get her GED.
“We had our education at home, learning how to run a household,” Joane said.
Both were homemakers until later in life. After her children were grown up enough, Jeane worked at several places, including Kay Products and Hope Haven. Joane got her start with jobs after her husband died in 1985, getting started cleaning houses and later Noble Lab in Sioux Center, which would become Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health.
From childhood onward, they were of a similar mind on most things.
“Same ideas, same choices,” Joane said. “I can remember if we would get an allowance or money, up in our room, we’d divide our money out evenly even if it wasn’t given evenly between us.”
Though they always did bear a strong resemblance to each other Jeane and Joane aren’t identical twins, however, and that descriptor applies to their physical appearance as much as it does to some personal distinctions. Joane, for instance, enjoyed housework, and Jeane enjoyed lending a hand with fieldwork and being outdoors. Both would regularly help prepare and deliver meals out to the men working in the field, however.
Still, they were always close, and they dressed alike until they married.
“And then we kind of went our separate ways except when we would get together to help cut cake for weddings, we got outfits alike again,” Joane said. “Now since we’re widows, we still dress alike. Not every day, but just for public things.”
One of their favorite memories is a trip they took to Washington state when they were around 19 years old to visit a good friend from church who had moved there with the rest of the family. They took a train there, starting the route in Alton.
“We were young and didn’t get out in the world a lot,” Joane said. “We didn’t go to high school and all that, but on that train, there was a drunk guy, and that kind of upset us until he was on the floor and out.”
There were plenty of more pleasant memories from the trip, however, such as their first time seeing the mountains as they rode the train. They got to ride around the mountains by car during their visit, too.
“We were going to go up a mountain there, but it was only in the foothills. When we wanted to turn around, we had to turn around in a pasture, and open up a gate,” Jeane said. “Then in that pasture, there was a bull in there. We sure got out of there in a hurry.”
Jeane was the first of the two to start dating their future spouses, a pair of South Dakota brothers named Herman and Cornelius Zomer, though they went by Herm and Cornie. Jeane had gone to provide some temporary assistance for a sister who had moved to Corsica, SD. While going to church there, she met Herm. It wasn’t long after that Cornie sent a card to Joane, and the rest is history.
They would marry in a double wedding in a ceremony held at Netherlands Reformed Church in Sioux Center June 23, 1955. They even decided on the same honeymoon destination: the Black Hills.
After the wedding, Jeane and Herm would stay in Iowa for a while before moving to join Joane and Cornie, who had made their home in South Dakota. Since they were happy in their marriages, they didn’t mind living apart from each other for the first time so much.
Farming, however, wasn’t going well for either of them by the end of the 1950s, so the two families decided on a new plan of action: to move to Grand Rapids, MI, in 1960 where the brothers could start new jobs working at a factory.
For years, they lived there, and the two families were constantly visiting each other and grew up alongside each other.
The closeness between the couples extended to their children, too. They did so much together and spent so much time together that there wasn’t much distinction between sibling and cousin.
“It was a wonderful life,” Joane said.
One of their pregnancies also timed out very closely together, with Jeane giving birth six weeks after Joane.
“They were supposed to be born at the same time, but it didn’t quite time out,” Jeane joked.
Cornie and Joane moved back to Iowa in 1968, settling down in rural Sioux Center, and that was hard for Jeane.
“I cried the whole day when she left,” Jeane said. “We were so lonesome for them, we came back in 1969.”
“Even though your husband liked it in Michigan and in the factories and my husband didn’t. He was tired of being in a building where the only windows were up on top. He wanted to get out and go farming again,” Joane said.
They each moved around rural Sioux County several times in the years after.
Joane was widowed in 1985 after Cornie died from a heart attack while driving truck along Highway 75 in Sioux Center; he ended up striking the Hagen Chiropractic Clinic building as a result. She’s lived in town since 1992. Jeane and Herm moved to Rock Valley in 1986. Herm died in 2010 after a 10-year battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
For all that has changed through the many years, they are grateful to still have each other for support and companionship as they approach their 90th birthday.
As Jeane put it, “God has been good.”