Cissie and Brother

Twins Arline and William Alton Miller, whose lives this family history blog are organized around, were born at 2 and 2:30 p.m., respectively, on April 13, 1925, to Clyde Clifton Miller, a car salesman, and Mamie Louella Jackson Miller, a housewife, at 1234 E. 24th St., Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, N.C.

This scrapblog seeks to preserve a family history and to honor the memory of twins Brother and Cissie, who were wonderful human beings and parents, as well as those of their sisters, Norma Martin Cashion and Marilyn Miller. In addition, it seeks to show how personal and family history always are shaped by and shape the history of a nation and its culture, and how, in the end, we are all linked, one way or another.

The twins, shown here in late 1925, were dubbed Brother and Cissie. Note Brother's oddly shaped head, the result of his being cramped in the womb. His parents worried about it and bound it in cloths to reshape it, with some success. His classmates teased him about it unmercifully, calling him "Egg." His kids, however, would have been unnerved to have him any other way.

Cissie and Brother were best friends their entire lives, even when far away from each other as their lives took different paths. When Cissie died in 1993, Brother told his wife and family that he felt a deep emptiness inside.

Cissie, left, and Brother, with his cousin Virginia Holcomb's dog, Prince (Brother LOVED dogs, a happy passion inherited by his daughter Chats), posed with friends and beloved cousin Virginia (later Harris) on a hot summer's day in the late 1930s.

The twins turned 16 on Easter Sunday 1941.

Brother and Cissie, all dressed up, sometime before Brother was drafted into the U.S. Army, which eventually would become his career, and headed for Europe to fight in World War II.

Brother, Cissie and Cissie's husband, Bill Edwards, in the 1950s. The twins didn't look much alike -- Brother had green eyes and light hair and Cissie had brown eyes and dark hair -- but they had identical smiles.