ROANOKE RAPIDS — It’s not too tough to imagine three young, area women who have known each other for years and remain very close friends. They grow up together, stay close, get married young ... they all have babies, but on the same day?

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Yes, it happened 50 years ago in Roanoke Rapids. Frances Whitby, Jane Fitzhugh and Christine Powell, all 19-years old, had their firstborn children on the same day, July 21, 1960.

“We had known each other since we were teenagers,” Whitby said. “Christine and I lived close together.”

The three girls went to school together — Roanoke Rapids Junior-Senior High School. They got married — to Earl Whitby, Clyde Powell and John Fitzhugh, respectively. Whitby and Powell got married in the same church. Christine discovered she was pregnant first. The other two followed, but not necessarily in quick succession.

“She was supposed to be born in August,” Fitzhugh said of her firstborn child.

As the women recalled, the pregnancies went relatively smooth, although there was some unpleasantness.

“It was hot,” Powell said. “I couldn’t see my feet. I was ready for it to be over with.”

For Fitzhugh, stress accelerated her pregnancy when her 16-year-old brother Ray passed away. The trauma of this event, Fitzhugh admitted, most likely led to her child coming early.

Powell had her child first, and didn’t realize the other two were in labor. “I was in my hospital room, looking out the window,” she recalled. “And here comes Frances, looking like she can’t hardly make it. I said, ‘I wonder if she’s in labor.’”

“I didn’t know the two of them were at the hospital when I went through,” Fitzhugh said.

What followed was the unlikely coincidence of three close friends having three babies on the same day. Today, those three babies — Terry Powell Patrick, Raye Fitzhugh Warren and Andy Whitby, turn 50.

“I can remember a few times Terry and I playing together,” Andy Whitby said.

Unfortunately, time and life didn’t have it in the cards for the next generation to be as close as the first. “This is probably the first time all six of us have been together since we were five or six years old,” Andy Whitby stated.

“Terry and I did end up at Chaloner (Middle School) together,” Warren remembered.

“Then we moved to Garysburg. I graduated from Weldon High School because my grandmother had an address in Weldon.”

Today, Terry Powell Patrick works as a teaching assistant at Belmont Elementary School and Raye Warren works as a fifth-grade math and science teacher at Manning Elementary School.

Andy Whitby served on the Weldon Town Board of Commissioners twice. “I have a good track record of getting elected,” Whitby said. “Just not re-elected.”

Raye Warren had two daughters of her own — Jen and Jessie, and Terry had one daughter as well, Kristin. None of those children were born on the same day.