WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (U-WIRE) — Two Wake Forest University freshmen that were born in the same hospital room within hours of one another have been reunited in a remarkable twist of fate.
Freshmen Emily Word and Anna Hight had no idea they were going to see each other for the first time in over 18 years when they arrived in Winston-Salem for freshman orientation in August.
On Jan. 21, 1983, Nancy Word gave birth to her daughter Emily in Medical City Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Nancy shared her hospital room with Brenda Hight who gave birth to a baby girl, Anna, on Jan. 22. Their daughters were born less than eight hours apart.
“I had a roommate, a woman with a baby girl,” Nancy Word said. “We checked out at the same time and my mom took a picture of the four of us. Emily was two days old and Anna was one day old,” she continued.
A month later, the Word family moved to Maine for nine years and then to Austin, Texas, while the Hights stayed in Dallas.
Eighteen and a half years later, Emily and her family came to the university for freshman orientation. “We stayed at a bed and breakfast. There were only four or five rooms and three different times you could eat breakfast,” Nancy said. “At breakfast we sat next to a woman and her daughter. We had a nice conversation with the usual pleasantries,” she said.
What the Words didn’t know then was that they had just been reunited with the mother and daughter who had shared their hospital room.
At first, the elder Word couldn’t figure out why Hight looked so familiar to her. “As we were driving to the university a little door opened in my brain and I told my husband he was not going to believe this. I told him I thought Brenda and I shared a hospital room the day Emily was born,” Nancy said.
At the orientation, Nancy approached Brenda Hight and told her that they had shared a hospital room when their daughters were born. “It was a stunning moment,” said the elder Hight.
For their daughters, the reunion was equally surprising. “I told everyone,” Emily said.
“My mom came running up to me and said that Anna and I were born together,” said Word. “I thought it was bizarre. It’s a really strange coincidence. My mother hadn’t even thought about it for 18 and a half years but she has a good memory for faces,” she said.
When Anna heard the news she was shocked. “I thought it was really weird. I mean, when does something like that happen?” she said. “My mom freaked out more than me, I guess because she was there and I don’t remember it.”
Brenda Hight described the event as an amazing set of happenstances. “We met by total coincidence by sharing a hospital room. We both were having a little girl. They moved up to Maine and we continued out life in Dallas. Anna picks Wake out of the blue and the next thing we know we’re having breakfast at a bed and breakfast together,” said Brenda.
Brenda said the occurrence was, “a topper on this whole experience because we are so glad Anna is loving her life at Wake Forest.”
Once Nancy returned to her home in Austin, she began digging through the family photo albums until she found the picture of the four of them at the hospital. There was no doubt in her mind that she had been reunited with her hospital roommate. But the coincidences don’t stop there. Not only did the elder Hight and Word attend the same high school, but their daughters, Anna and Emily, are both pledging Kappa Delta sorority.
“Unbeknownst to us, we ended up pledging the same sorority,” said Emily Word. “We say that we were separated at birth, and now we’re sisters.”
Daughters Hight and Word hope to see more of one another this semester. “Last semester we didn’t see each other at all and now we do because we both do a lot of stuff with KD. It’s too weird of a coincidence not to hang out,” Word said.
As Nancy Word described it, “It is one of those six degrees of separation.”
— The Old Gold and Black’s Web site can be found at www.ogb.wfu.edu.