FULLERTON – The stage was set, the BBC camera rolling.
Ann Hunt, 78, had just flown into Orange County from England to meet the twin sister she discovered only a year ago.
Since learning about each other, Hunt and Elizabeth “Liz” Hamel have spoken mostly by Skype. But they wanted to look each other in the eyes and finally hug.
Within minutes, Hamel walked in the room. Liz had always known she had a twin.
On Thursday night, the sisters reunited for the first time since birth.
“How lovely to see you in the flesh,” Hamel said, embracing her twin sister for the first time.
“I’ve got a sister,” Hunt said.
The women seemed in awe of being together, saying that the last time they were together they were kicking each other in the womb.
They both have white hair, but style it differently. Hamel is a bit taller. She also claims to be older.
They have a slight resemblance. They’re most likely fraternal twins as opposed to identical, which means they shared their mother’s womb without sharing the identical DNA. A test is pending to be sure.
The twins were separated at birth in England and reconnected at the Fullerton Marriott with a little help from Nancy Segal, a Cal State Fullerton psychology professor and an expert on twins.
Studying twins helps psychologists better understand the role genes and environment play in human development, Segal said.
Segal is especially intrigued by twins who are raised apart.
“These are rare cases packed with human interest and scientific value,” she said. “This was a very unique opportunity.”
The BBC filmed the reunion and has been documenting their story.
Hunt and Hamel are the world’s longest-known separated twins, beating the prior record by three years, said Segal, who wrote about another set of twins who found each other when they were 75.
Hamel flew in from Albany, Ore., accompanied by her son, Quinton.
Hunt traveled from Aldershot, a town near London, with her daughter, Samantha Stacey.
When Alice Alexandra Patience Lamb, their mother, was 33, she gave birth to the twins in Aldershot. She was working as a domestic servant and made the decision to give up one of her girls.
“She found out she was pregnant and the birth father fled,” Hamel said.
Lamb decided she could only care for one child, so she gave away the child she thought would be more adoptable: Ann.
Liz had curvature of the spine, and in the 1930s, a physical defect would’ve made it more difficult for her to be adopted.
These are things that Hunt didn’t know until Hamel told her.
Hunt lived in an orphanage in London for six months before Gladys and Hector Wilson adopted her. The couple separated when Hunt was 6.
She adored her adopted mother and, like her sister, she grew up an only child. Hunt found out she was adopted when she was 13 or 14 but at that time didn’t know she was a twin.
Alice Lamb married a widower with a son when she was 49. She died of a heart attack at 77.
Alice Lamb raised Hamel until her daughter enlisted in the Women’s Royal Enlisted Navy. She was stationed in Malta, where she met her future husband, a “yank,” on a blind date and later had two sons.
She moved to the United States when she was 28 and still has an English accent.
“I knew that I had a twin, but I never thought I would see her again,” Hamel said.
The adoption records were sealed for a long time. Hamel wondered about her sister and occasionally searched for her online.
Hunt, on the other hand, never knew her birth mother. Until a year ago, she didn’t know where she was born or that she had a twin sister.
“It was such a big shock,” Hunt said.
Stacey, Hunt’s daughter, is the one who tracked down Hamel. She began by trying to find her mother’s biological mother, and stumbled on the fact that Hunt had a twin sister.
Stacey sent Hamel a letter a year ago.
“I got the letter out of the mailbox,” Hamel said, and she took it to her son Quinton who lives next door. Within 10 minutes, the twins were talking on the phone.
One thing they discovered is that they are both widows after having been married to men named Jim.
Hamel’s husband had recently died and she didn’t want to travel.
But she grew interested in learning more about twins after talking to Hunt by phone. She wound up checking out one of Segal’s books at a library.
Quinton Hamel was looking through the book and saw that Segal had written about the twins who had been separated 75 years. He told his mother, “You have that beat.”
Quinton Hamel contacted Segal by email to explain that his mother and her twin sister would now be the longest-separated twins. Segal emailed him within 30 seconds. She arranged the reunion, knowing that studying the twins would allow her to advance her research.
As an adopted teen, Hunt said she used to imagine she might be related to the Royal family.
She avoided looking for her biological mother out of devotion to her adopted mother, Gladys, who told her, “You’re my chosen child.”
Hunt’s mother told her that her biological mother couldn’t look after her.
When her mother died, she felt like she could look for her biological mother. She was delighted to discover she had a twin.
“Mum was just so excited. She rang up everybody,” said Stacey, one of Hunt’s three daughters.
The twins will be in the lab today with Segal, founder of the Twin Studies Center at Cal State Fullerton, who will conduct several tests.
If the twins are fraternal, Segal expects them to be more different than alike. If they’re identical, she expects them to be more alike than different.
After the testing and some sightseeing, the twins and the cousins plan to spend a week at Hamel’s home in Oregon looking at old photos and finding out for themselves how alike or different they are.
“You wonder about someone and what they’re like and suddenly they’re there,” Hamel said. “It’s a shock.”
“It’s a shock and a joy,” her sister said.
Contact the writer: scruz@ocregister.com