The Axe quadruplets appear in a photograph with their father, Phillip Axe, and siblings, Timothy, Charles and Kathleen. The identical girls caused a national sensation when they were born at St. Rita’s Hospital on March 4, 1963.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
Barbara Birkmeier was born in Delphos to Carl and Mary Birkmeier on Feb. 17, 1937. She grew up in the city’s comfortable confines; the notable events of her childhood — birthday parties attended, Brownie troops joined, academic awards won — regularly chronicled in the Delphos Courant and Delphos Daily Herald. As a teenager at St. John’s High School, she sang with the glee club, landed a role in the senior class play, received merit medals for her classroom work, served on the yearbook staff and graduated in 1955.
Following high school, she entered St. Rita’s School of Nursing and received her degree Aug. 23, 1958. Eight days later, her engagement to Phillip Axe, a native of St. Marys, was announced in the Lima Citizen, where Phillip worked as an advertising salesman. They were married in St. John’s church in Delphos on June 6, 1959. Over the next three years and nine months, Barbara gave birth to three children, Kathleen, Charles and Timothy.
On March 4, 1963, she gave birth to four more in 17 minutes.
The births of the four identical girls at St. Rita’s Hospital, where 26-year-old Barbara worked as a registered nurse, put the Axe family and Lima at the center of a happy bit of history.
Barbara Axe died May 11 in Toledo at the age of 86.
Monday, March 4, the day the quadruplets were born dawned with leaden skies and soaking rain that, combined with melting snow from a long winter, caused flooding in many areas of Lima. The front pages of both the city’s papers carried a story on the deaths of six children in a fire two days earlier on East 13th Street in Perry Township.
Barbara Axe awoke that day feeling “excellent,” the Citizen reported.
“Her husband came home from lunch and not ‘feeling real good myself, I decided to lie down,’ he said. The next thing Axe knew his wife tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘Let’s go,’” according to the newspaper.
The first of the quadruplets “let out her first welcomed howl at 3:27 p.m., followed two minutes later by No. 2,” the Citizen reported March 5 under the front-page headline “AXE QUADS HERE… ALL GIRLS.” The third child emerged at 3:40 p.m., the last at 3:44 p.m., the newspaper wrote.
“A team of three obstetricians, a pediatrician, four anesthetists, an intern, an extern and three nurses assisted in the delivery. Father Phil was on the outside chain smoking, but outwardly calm,” the Citizen added.
The mother, meanwhile, was composed and even witnessed the births, according to the newspaper.
“The 26-year-old brunette was given a local anesthetic because her physical condition was ‘excellent’ and she is a graduate nurse,” according to the Citizen.
Babara Axe told the Citizen, “I didn’t miss a thing, as each girl was born, they held her up for me to see. They’re just beautiful.”
The Citizen, too, beamed.
“An event like four dark-haired sisters being born all at one time occurs like once in every 750,000 births … and the chances of the father being in the newspaper business makes the odds even greater … but Phillip Axe, 28, advertising promotion director of the Lima Citizen not only got four of a kind, this lucky fellow now has a full house with three other youngsters – and all in the space of four years of marriage.”
On its editorial page, the Citizen wrote, “It’s much more than a local event, although everyone in Limaland is rooting for Barbara and her daughters. A nation is watching and praying.”
Two days after the quadruplets were born, the Citizen reported, “Lima’s famous Axe quadruplets now have names: Susan Marie, Anna Marie, Rita Marie and Julia Marie.” Marie was chosen as the common middle name, Strong noted, because it is Latin for Mary, after the Virgin Mary, and Mary was the first name of the quadruplets’ grandmothers, Mrs. Mary Axe and Mrs. Mary Birkmeier.
In the days after the births, congratulations poured in. By March 10, the Axes had received about 500 letters and telegrams from all over the world, including a telegram from President John F. Kennedy. Later that month, Pope John XXIII sent his blessings, while Ohio Gov. James Rhodes paid a visit. Barbara Axe and her 3-year-old daughter Kathy would appear as guests on the “I’ve Got a Secret Show” and were guests on the “Today” show, hosted by Lima native Hugh Downs.
On March 12, according to the Citizen, Barbara Axe returned to the family’s 1918 Oakland Parkway home.
“Birth of the now-famous quartet of girls made the pages of two leading news magazines today,” the Citizen added. “Newsweek has a story on page 71 about the births last Monday. … Time has an article (with picture) in its medical section on page 47.”
Time, the Citizen added, “described the birth of live, healthy quadruplets as one-in-2 ½ million.” The story of the quadruplets appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide.
Gifts began arriving almost immediately. In a full-page ad in the Citizen the day after the quadruplets were born, Pangles Master Markets congratulated the Axes and promised Gerber’s Strained Baby Food for a year, free of charge. The Rev. Edward C. Herr, principal of Lima Central Catholic High School, told Phillip Axe, “The girls will have their tuition paid at LCC,” according to the Citizen.
One by one, beginning in early April, the quadruplets, who were born prematurely, came home. Rita Marie was the last to arrive in mid-April.
On March 4, 1964, the quadruplets celebrated their first birthday with a party at St Rita’s, where their mother still worked on weekends.
“They slept a little, posed professionally for photographers, mauled presents and smeared themselves with icing,” the Associated Press wrote. “In short it was a typical birthday party for a 1-year-old except here there were four 1-year-olds – the Axe quadruplets.”
By then, Phillip Axe was working as an advertising salesman for the Toledo Blade, the Lima Citizen having shut down in January 1964. In early April 1964, Barbara Axe and the rest of the family began moving to Toledo to join him.
Barbara Axe returned to nursing after the move to Toledo and, in 1985, opened the Toddler Tech Child Care Center.
Susan, the first of the quadruplets born, was killed in a traffic accident in Toledo in June 1993. Phillip Axe died at 61 years of age in Toledo in September 1996. Charles Axe, who was 2 years old when his quadruplet sisters were born, died at the age of 55 in Michigan in January 2016.
Barbara Axe is survived by daughters Kathleen, Anna, Rita and Julia and sons Timothy and Joseph.
SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
LEARN MORE
See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
