World’s First Surviving Septuplets Graduate High School

Iowa: Seven students threw their caps up in the air on May 22 when America’s most famous septuplets reached their newest milestone — graduating from high school.

Nearly 20 years after their birth made headlines around the world, Nathan, Natalie, Alexis, Brandon, Kelsey, Kenny, and Joel McCaughey, clad in black and red graduation gowns, walked on stage Sunday to accept their diplomas from the Carlisle High School in Iowa

On November 19, 1997, the McCaughey siblings were catapulted into the spotlight when they became the first septuplets to survive infancy in the US. They were born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey.

Alexis and Natalie McCaughey were recognized as part of the National Honor Society on Sunday, and they both made the academic top 15 percent of their classes, too. Some of the seven fledglings are getting ready to fly the coop.

Kelsey, who sings in the state choir, wants to keep focused on music, “After graduation, I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that I want to go into music, musical theater — anything around there,” she said. Whereas Kenny, the first born, aspires to get into the construction industry. “I'm definitely going to miss everybody being so close to everyone. It’s going to be hard just to see us all go, especially my brother Brandon going into the military. Him and I were the closest. I’m going to miss him a lot,” Kenny Jr. said.

Two of the kin are intending to go to Hannibal-LaGrange University, in Missouri, where the septuplets have been offered a free education, and Brandon has enlisted in the army.

Nathan and Alexis, who suffer from cerebral palsy, are celebrating a new physical lease on life. “Me and Lexi are completely done with surgeries and checkups and unless we need something, we’re completely done with it,” Nathan said. “This was my first year getting into the high school cheerleading squad so that was a really big moment for me,” Alexis said.

Nathan, Natalie, Alexis, Brandon, Kelsey, Kenny, and Joel have beaten every odds to breathe and survive, let alone lead a healthy life, when every medical conditions were against them.