Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505310058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
William Byrd High School in Vinton may be a world record holder.
The 240-student graduating class this year has seven sets of twins - a number school officials think is unequaled anywhere.
William Byrd principal Robert Patterson says this is worthy of the Guinness Book of Records' attention.
Carolyn Montgomery, a guidance counselor at William Byrd, has been in education for a number of years in several places but says she had never before heard of a graduating class with this many twins.
Several years ago, Cave Spring High School had five sets of twins in the same graduating class, said Susan Prewitt, William Byrd's senior class sponsor. That's the most she had heard of until now.
Of the William Byrd twins, only one is a brother-brother set - Chuck and Jimmy Terry. There are two brother-sister combinations - Alisa and Mitch Kotz and Jeremy and Julie Duvall. All the others are sisters, and two sets of those are identical - Becky and Adriane Fritz and Amy and Wendy Hayden.
The Haydens and Terrys are honor students. Deepa and Nanda Channaiah are two of the class valedictorians. Because of their accomplishments, the six will be among the speakers at William Byrd's graduation exercises June 9 at 5 p.m. at the Roanoke Civic Center.
The class will have 240 graduates - 106 males and 134 females - slightly larger than last year's class of 213.
The twins stand apart in another way, too.
More than 80 percent of William Byrd's graduates typically go on to higher education, according to the school's guidance department. But of the 14 twins, all but one are headed for college.
Virginia Western Community College is attracting the greatest number - the Fritzes, Kotzes and Terrys, and Kerin Ephraim.
Rebecca Ephraim is to enroll in the College of Health Sciences in Roanoke.
The Channaiah sisters will enter the University of Virginia; Amy Hayden will attend Liberty University in Lynchburg, and Wendy Hayden will enter Virginia Tech.
Julie Duvall will enter Averett College in Danville. Her brother Jeremy plans to continue working at a job in power mechanics he has held while going to school this year.
At least five of the twins have scholarships - both of the Channaiah sisters, the Fritz sisters and Wendy Hayden.
Only the Kotzes have other twins in their family: an aunt and uncle who are twins.
Casey praised the senior class. "They are good students, and the class has a low dropout rate," she said.
She did not have exact figures, but estimated the dropout rate at about half of that for the class of 1994, when 37 seniors dropped out.
Overall, Casey said, this year's senior class has been a good class.
"They are good students, and the class has a low dropout rate," she said.
Casey said school officials are putting more effort into dropout prevention.
"We work at it all the time from all sorts of angles," she said.
She did not have exact figures on the dropout rate for this class, but she estimated it is about half of that for the class of 1994, when 37 seniors dropped out of school before graduation.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***