2003 News Archive

Letter, Photograph Stir Memories
By Ed Grisamore
Telegraph Columnist

SANDERSVILLE -- The letter was in a box his mother found in the closet.

William Rawlings Jr. sorted through the contents with a sense of duty and curiosity.
He admits having a few packrats on his family tree.

"I come from a long line of people who 'save' things,'' he said, laughing.

Inside was an 87-year-old stamp and a canceled check from 1918. There was a basketball program from a local civic club, the names and numbers now forgotten. Rawlings then came across a stack of letters he had written to his family during his college and medical school days. He almost tossed them in the circular file when he noticed one dated Sept. 23, 1975.

It was written during his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was participating in an exchange program at Reza Pahlavi Hospital in Teheran, Iran.At the bottom was a small sketch he had drawn of a set of conjoined (Siamese) twins. They were connected at the head.

Wait a minute, he thought. Could it be?

Then he remembered taking photographs of Laleh and Ladan Bijani at the hospital when they were 20 months old. It was the same Iranian twins who recently captured the hearts and imagination of the world in their quest to become separate individuals.