Gov. Pat Neff, president of Baylor University during the Great Depression, was a genius at tooting the horn for his beloved alma mater.

He started a radio program on old WACO-AM called, “The Baylor Hour,” to showcase the performers in the speech, music and English departments at Baylor

At other times, he’d offer “Tidings from the Baylor Towers,” a show featuring the music of the Golden Wave Band and addresses by that esteemed local orator – Pat Neff.

Neff (1871-1952) was a careful financial administrator who helped bring Baylor out of debt in the 1930s and led it into a period of growth in the 1940s. During his presidency (1932-1947), enrollment at the university jumped from about 1,200 to more than 4,000 students. The campus footprint was almost doubled, and the university’s endowment grew.

And in 1933, he scored a national publicity coup when he offered a full, four-year ride to Baylor to a bevy of Baptist belles from Hollis, Okla., who were better known to the world as the Keys Quads.

The girls — Roberta, Mona, Mary and Leota — were born June 4, 1915, to Alma and Flake Keys, a farm couple who already had four children. Roberta and Mona were identical twins; Mary and Leota were fraternal.

Word soon spread from the town of 1,500-some souls to the outside world. The quadruplets’ entrepreneurial older siblings found a big iron baby bed and fit the four into it, and collected coins from the curious who swarmed through their home.

1st set to reach adulthood

These were the days before fertility drugs and high tech equipment to save the lives of the very small newborns. In fact, the Keys girls became the first known set of same-gender quadruplets to make it to adulthood, according to American Genetic Association, publishers of the Journal of Heredity.

From birth, the four were often on display. Their parents taught them early to line up in birth order and smile for the cameras. They began singing at a tender age in their local Baptist church. Later, the four learned piano and by high school were skilled saxophonists as well.

Through the years, the quads’ parents received numerous invitations for the girls to join the circus or hit the vaudeville stages, to appear at the Chicago World’s Fair or head on out to Hollywood. But Alma and Flake Keys declined.

Still, even they couldn’t resist a little showmanship — and the money that could help the family weather hard times. From the age of 9 months until they were about 9 years old, the Keys Quads appeared at state and county fairs as a special “exhibit.”  For a dime or a quarter, folks could watch them have a tea party, reading or sewing or simply playing with dolls.

College seemed like an impossible dream, especially during the Great Depression. Pat Neff, former governor of the great state of Texas and now president of Baylor made the girls an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The Keys Quads, who dressed alike even as adults, arrived at Baylor in 1933. Neff wasted no time in taking the girls around the state on a publicity tour, during which they performed before his speeches.

In May 1936, as roving ambassadors for the Texas Centennial Commission, the Keyses and Neff went on a 5,000-mile journey across the United States and Canada.

Stops included cities like St. Louis, Chicago and Toronto. When in New York City, they appeared as special guests on the Fred Allen radio program. In the nation’s capital, they visited the politicians representing Texas and Oklahoma in the august halls.

They also traveled to meet the famous Dionne quintuplets — Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne — identicals born in a remote farmhouse in northern Canada on May 28, 1934.

The Dionnes, toddlers at this time living in a state-sponsored private hospital/tourist attraction known as QuintLand, were like the Keyses in that they were the object of public fascination and folks paid to gawk at them.

At Baylor, twins Roberta and Mona Keys took the same classes as education majors and all four joined the band. In her senior year, theater major Leota, spokeswoman for the quartet, was the senior class secretary for the fall semester and was a finalist for Homecoming Queen.

In the summers, they performed in churches or for civic clubs, or even during the intermissions at the picture show to earn their keep. They were billed in those days as the “laughing, dancing and frolicking Keys sisters.”

Separate lives

After graduation from Baylor in 1937, they performed around the country until 1940, when Mona got married and broke up the sister act.

In June 1944, the last sister to wed, Mary, married a former New York Giants football player, Jack Anderson, whom she had met while he was serving as a sergeant at Camp Hood (now Fort Hood) and she was an Army hostess. Anderson was also a Baylor grad.

The quads lived their separate lives, but gathered often for family fellowship. Shortly after a 1970 reunion, Leota, the “youngest” sister, died suddenly of a blood clot. Mona, twin of Roberta Keys Torn of Houston, and Mary both died in 1997. Torn’s husband, retired FBI agent Roland “Rip” Torn (whose nephew Elmore, the actor, liked the moniker so much he took it for his stage name) died in 1999 after a long illness.

Roberta, the last survivor of the Keys Quads, celebrated her 95th birthday this summer and quipped one time to the Houston Chronicle: “I’m the first born and the last to go.”

 Sources:  The Land, the Law and the Lord: The Life of Pat Neff, by Dorothy Blodgett, Terrell Blodgett and David L. Scott, 2007; Quadruplets and Higher Multiple Births, by Marie M. Clay, 1989; Baylor University Round-up (1934,1935,1936,1937); Handbook of Texas Online, the Houston Chronicle.

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