Perfect 10

In the 1940s and '50s, the "famous O'Neil sisters of Boston" were everywhere. Marching in the Easter parade. Tap dancing on Ed Sullivan. Modeling for Macy's and McCall's patterns. Meeting with the cardinal in New York. Stories and photos of the 10 Boston girls, lined up and dressed up in identical outfits sewn by their mother, ran in publications coast to coast. Newsreels in movie theaters featured them. They got fan mail from Europe, Asia, and Australia.

The pinnacle came when Life, then the largest-circulation magazine in the country, featured a spread on the sisters in its April 7, 1952, issue. The magazine cost 20 cents, splashed a come-hither Marilyn Monroe on the cover, and led with a story headlined "There Is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers." There were the sisters on pages 42 and 43, lined up in stairstep order -- from youngest and smallest to oldest and tallest -- dressed in matching outfits as they prepared for the Fifth Avenue Easter parade.

But the girls were a Boston story, year after year kicking off the local Easter parade in matching suits or dresses, hats, gloves, and purses. The older girls might sport a different collar and stockings instead of anklets, but everything else was the same. There would also be matching attire for dance shows at their parish, governors' inaugurals, and other events around town.

They even made it into a math textbook, as Ginny O'Neil -- the sixth sister -- learned when she attended classes at Boston State College. "I said, 'Professor, that's me and my sisters!' He was shocked," says O'Neil, 65, an artist who lives in Jamaica Plain, where the girls grew up.

The lesson was on probability, as in, what's the probability of having eight sisters in a row? (It was before the last two were born . ) Using Pascal's triangle, the chapter concluded that the chances of a family having four girls and four boys were 70 times greater than having eight consecutive girls. Today the O'Neil sisters are listed in the Boston Women's Heritage Trail guidebook, under "Easter Parade, Commonwealth Avenue Mall."

Now the girls are grandmothers. One of them, Barbara, died of breast cancer in 1999. There were also two O'Neil boys, on each end of the girls. The oldest, Lawrence, died in 1990. The 10 surviving O'Neils, ranging in age from 54 to 75, get together whenever they can. All but two -- Dan, the youngest, and Mary June, the seventh sister -- live in the Boston area.

Six months ago, the sisters decided it was time to do something with all the fading clippings and photos they had from more than half a century ago. Mary June Hanrahan was drafted to create a website (tenoneilsisters.com).

"I knew that what I had would disappear when I do," Hanrahan says from her home in Milwaukee. "Everyone has different things, so we decided to pull them all together and save and record it." Hanrahan moved 41 years ago when her husband took a job with a law firm. She is 63 now, has four sons, and still misses being with her sisters in Boston. "I've had a great life out here, but nothing can compare to the joy and love of that house," says Hanrahan .

The O'Neils all speak in glowing terms of their mother, Julia: her organizational skills, her love for her family, her patience and creativity. "We thought she could have run US Steel," Hanrahan says. "She was a genius at keeping things going with 14 people in the house. People always say, how did she do it? And my answer is, with joy and love."

The idea for the Easter ritual came from their father. Daniel O'Neil told his wife he'd give up cigars if she'd outfit their daughters in similar fashion for the occasion. He was a proud Irishman who wanted to show the Brahmins who paraded their children that his family, too, was special. Every year, a couple of months before Easter, Julia O'Neil would buy material by the bolt and begin cutting and sewing. The older daughters helped with buttons and ironing, while the toddlers ran after errant thimbles. The furniture in the modest house was obscured by matching hats, gloves, and bags.

The Easter tradition died in 1959 with Dan O'Neil's death. He was an insurance man who, with his wife, cleaned bank buildings weekdays at 5 a.m., arriving home at 7 to get the children off to school. When he died, the children who were still at home would pile into the station wagon and help their mother clean the banks before school.

"My sisters are my best friends," says Danielle McGreal, 59, the second youngest sister, who lives in Marshfield. "The oldest sisters took care of the younger ones a lot, and the younger ones like me baby-sat for their children when they started having them." Among the 12 O'Neil siblings, they produced 59 children.

Today, four of the sisters golf together regularly, and five of them spend the winters in Boca Raton, Fla., within blocks of one another.

"We're very close," says Evelyn Kiley, 67, the fifth sister. "Those of us in Boca Raton go to the gym a few times a week, take yoga together, and some play golf." Her main residence is in Squantum; she and her husband owned a South Boston real estate business, now run by their sons. They raised six children. "My mother handled twice as many as that, so how could I ever complain?" she says.

Over the years, there have been get-togethers at bike rides, road races, holiday feasts, vacations, weddings, births, funerals, reunions -- the events that make up the fabric of a family. But the last time all 10 women were together was in 1999, when they were featured at Stonehill College's Irish festival. Barbara died a month later.

Julie O'Neil, 62, the eighth sister, lives in Mission Hill. An artist who travels the world doing videography, she has four children. Although she loved growing up in a large family, "I certainly didn't want to have 12 children myself."

The other sisters are Jane, Diane, Maureen, and Frances, the youngest .

Then there's Dan. "I'm the one no one ever mentions," he says. The baby of the family, he's 54, an electrician living near St. Petersburg, Fla. He vaguely remembers the dressing up and the parades. For a couple of years, his mother would also make him suits that matched the girls' dresses.

There were benefits to having 10 sisters, he says: "Everyone wanted to hang out with me because I had all these beautiful sisters at home."