By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Gin, Tom and Joe Hebert, the oldest living triplets in the state, are celebrating their 75th birthday on Feb. 16. The given names of the triplets are Leon, Richard and Leo, but none have ever gone by those names. Their family also includes four other brothers and a sister.

Born within five minutes of one another, from a mother that stood 4 feet and 11 inches tall, the oldest triplets in the state are now celebrating their 75th birthday.

“When I was born, this guy here was holding onto my heel,” said Gin Hebert, pointing to his identical brother, Tom.

Gin, Tom and Joe Hebert grew up on a small farm in the Hooksett Village, three of seven brothers and one sister. The farm, which supplied the food for the family’s table, had cows, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, a horse and vegetable gardens.

“I know we had cows because I had to milk them,” said Joe, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the trio.

Gin and Joe still live in the Village area, while Tom lives in Allenstown.

“We’re a family that gets along and we don’t fight with each other,” said Gin, the longtime pastor of the Trinity Full Gospel Church in Hooksett.

Tom made a career in the banking business and the tire business, while Joe, a Hooksett Citizen of the Year in the 1980s, has worked since 1965 at the Hooksett Village waterworks.

“I’m still working,” said Joe. “I’ll go there right after this.”

All three of the brothers, along with their four other brothers, served in the armed forces, though Joe was the only one of the seven that was drafted.

“I was married one month when Truman sent me the papers,” said Joe, still somewhat perturbed.

Tom, left, Gin and Joe Hebert grew up on a small hillside farm in the Hooksett Village. Gin and Joe still live in the Village area, and Tom lives in Allenstown.

The trio had humble beginnings, though their birth was widely publicized in area newspapers. When the brothers were very young, a family from Nashua came to their Hooksett home and asked to buy the triplets. “Their mother kicked those people out,” said Tom’s wife of 53 years, Anita Herbert.

“She told them we weren’t for sale,” said Joe.

Each of the brothers fondly remembers childhood spent in the village.

“We lived on top of the hill, and we spent our whole childhood there,” said Gin.

Interestingly, none of the three brothers goes by their given name.

Joe, born as Leo, just remembers his father, a railroad worker, referring to him as Joe from the beginning.

Tom was supposed to be named Leonard, but was baptized by his godmother as Richard. His mother, not liking that name, instead called him Tom.

Gin, born as Leon, earned his name for his propensity as a child to sneak to the side yard and steal away with pieces of his mother’s gingerbread cake.

Besides looks, the three brothers share some remarkable similarities, perhaps stemming from those days spent together as children. Each maintains their own gardens and each are avid bird lovers. Joe has made hundreds of intricate wooden birdhouses that have sold throughout the state.

“All of them are the same,” said Anita. “They’re workaholics.”

But it hasn’t been all work for the triumvirate. As triplets are prone to do, the three made creative use of their similarities.

Anita, with a first-hand perspective, said, “When they were going out, they would play tricks on their girlfriends.”

Gin said the Trinity Full Gospel congregation was once floored after Tom caroused the church’s aisles, accepting greetings from churchgoers assuming he was the pastor.

“Then I would come in,” remembered Gin, smiling. “Oh boy.”

The trio is having a birthday open house and celebration on Saturday, Feb. 18, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Trinity Full Gospel Church on Hooksett’s Highland Street.

There ought to be a good crowd. Between them, the Hebert triplets have 11 children, 22 grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren.

Joe, as yet, has no great-grandchildren. “I’m not old enough yet,” he said.