Identical twins Julian and Adrian Riester.
Identical twins Julian and Adrian Riester were born seconds apart 92 years ago in the United States. Last Wednesday, the brothers in the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor died of heart failure hours apart – Brother Julian in the morning and Brother Adrian in the evening. Professed friars for 65 years, they spent much of that time working together at St. Bonaventure University, doing carpentry work, gardening and driving visitors to and from the airport and around town. “It really is almost a poetic ending to the remarkable story of their lives,” said St. Bonaventure spokesman Tom Missel. “Stunning when you hear it, but hardly surprising given that they did almost everything together.” Julian and Adrian were born Jerome and Irving on March 27, 1919, to a couple who already had five daughters. They took the names of saints upon their ordination in the Catholic Church. “Dad was a doctor and he said a prayer for a boy,” Adrian once said, according to St. Bonaventure. “The Lord fooled him and sent two.” After attending St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, the brothers were turned away by the military because of their eyesight – one had a bad left eye while the other a bad right eye. Eventually they joined the friars of Holy Name Province in New York City. They received separate assignments before reuniting at the seminary at St. Bonaventure from 1951 to 1956. After serving parishes in Buffalo for 17 years, they returned to St. Bonaventure in 1973 and spent the next 35 years there. The brothers were buried at St. Bonaventure Cemetery on Tuesday.