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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Oct. 17. 1963
Quints Claim Early Life Minus Men
NEW YORK —(UPI)— The four surviving Dionne quintuplets charged today that their parents taught them "there was no possibility of our ever marrying" and had them followed by detectives to check on their friendships even when they were adults.
What rankled, said the quints in their second published blast at Oliva and Elizire Dionne, was that their father charged the detectives to them through the trust fund set up in their behalf.
THE ARTICLE detailing their life after the death in 1953 of their sister, Emile, appears in the current issue of McCall's magazine. Three of the quints are now married and the fourth, Yvonne, is a nun.
The quints wrote that as young adults "our area of greatest ignorance was men."
"We had been carefully guarded and even the most casual contact with them . . . the only members of the male sex we could talk to without risking dad's displeasure were a few neighbors' sons, our brothers, and before our marriages, the admirers of our older sisters. . ."
"THEERE WAS NO possibility, we had been taught, of our ever marrying. We were destined to stay at home or go into the church as inevitably as water runs down to the sea . . . men frightened us to death."
Cecile was the first to find romance. She met and fell in love with Philline Langlois, who worked in a flower shop which Marie had opened in order to be near Cecile. He used an assumed name to avoid the press.
The three married sisters—Annette Marie and Cecile—revealed that they also were scared of having children, but all have had strong, healthy children.
"IT SOON DAWNED on Phil," the quints wrote, "that he was being watched. A series of men followed him around the city, looking exactly as they do in television, in raincoats and hats with pull-down brims.
"There was no doubt that this was dad's doing, because the detectives were charged against us. The bill for their services was included in the annual statement of accounts that was submitted to each of us under the terms of the trust agreement."
CECILE AND Langlois married and Marie's business venture failed. She worked briefly in another flower shop, using an assumed name to avoid publicity, but "the detectives appeared again and were billed to her account as before."
Marie eventually married Germain Allard, although her father was opposed to the match. Annette also married. They came, in time, to have some understanding of their father's attitude.
"He was compelled, by no choice of his own, to fight so hard to win us back as a kind of prize (from Dr. Dafoe) that he locked us up too tight and cried out against them, outsiders, who tried to interfere," they said.
"HE WAS RELUCTANT to give us up again, even in marriage. He wanted us for himself as long as he lived. He did not see the good things in our birth. The money that flowed spontaneously was both a good and bad thing.
"Good because it took the edge off the poverty our family had experienced and made material living comfortable for everybody, ourselves most of all.
"But it was bad because it changed the nature of dad."
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