Fifty years of the Silver Twin tradition will be honored at a Homecoming Banquet set for 6 p.m. Friday Oct. 15 at the Coyote Crossing Golf Clubroom in West Lafayette. Reservations are limited; deadline is October 8. Cost is $26 for Purdue Band and Orchestra Alumni Club members; non-members, $30. There’s an on-line registration form at www.purduealum.org/pboac

The Purdue twirling tradition known as the Silver Twins dates back to1960 when twin twirlers, Karon and Sharon Roeske came to the attention of then director of the “All-American” Marching Band Al G. Wright and he decided to create another spotlight twirling position to go with the Golden Girl and Girl in Black.

“You couldn’t turn down talent like that. The chance of finding twins that are twirlers seemed a million in one,” Wright said at the time. “Then I started getting letters from others who told me they had twin daughters and they’d be here in 1987 or 1991.”

But filling the position with twins hasn’t always been easy. Twelve of the 21 sets of Silver Twins have actually been twins. At other times, twin sets of talented, but unrelated, twirlers were together by the Bands Department to fill the position.

In 2004, when Morgan and Megan VonDielingen were selected for the position it was the first time in more than a decade that identical twins had filled the position. At that time the Band Department rededicated itself to honoring the original definition of the position and to filling it with twin sisters in the decades to come. No matter who fills the position, the duo always appears together in performances, usually mirroring each other’s movements. And you never see one without the other in photographs.