Hélène Joubert

Hélène Joubert marked her 100th birthday in June 2024 at the Life Care Center of Attleboro, where she has lived for several years. Two years later, at 102, she is still telling the stories that make up one of the more remarkable family histories in southeastern Massachusetts: thirteen children, including a set of triplets and three sets of twins, all born within roughly eight years.

Born in 1924 to a French Catholic family in Massachusetts, Hélène grew up in Lynn before her family settled in the Attleboro area. She married Wilfred Joubert, a World War II veteran who had served nearly four years with the 209th Coast Artillery Regiment in Europe, shortly after he came home from the war. Their marriage lasted 58 years, until his death in 2005.

Thirteen Children, One Small Apartment

The Jouberts raised their family on a machinist’s pay, in a three-bedroom apartment secured through the Attleboro Housing Authority. The boys shared one room with three bunk beds; the girls split the other two bedrooms. Hélène and Wilfred kept a hideaway bed in the living room. There was one household rule: no coming downstairs once the lights went out.

The multiple births came in a tight cluster. Triplets Richard, Russell, and Rosalind arrived in 1953, born at Sturdy Memorial Hospital and delivered a few weeks early into incubators that were still new technology for the hospital at the time. Two more sets of twins followed, almost exactly a year apart, in 1955 and 1956. By the family’s own count, that’s one set of triplets, three sets of twins, and three single births — six girls and six boys — within eight years.

Faith Through the Hard Days

Hélène doesn’t tell her story as an unbroken run of good fortune. She has spoken openly about the day Wilfred died in 2005, following a stroke, and about the loss of one of her sons to pancreatic cancer years later. Through both, she has said her Catholic faith was what carried her — the same faith, she says, that kept her and Wilfred from ever questioning the size of the family God gave them.

She’s also spoken about lean years raising thirteen children on a machinist’s income: buying day-old bread by the dozen loaves, boiling down powdered milk, and stretching every grocery run.

“We were never poor. We were warm and eating good.”
— Hélène Joubert

The Showcase Showdown

In 1980, while visiting a son in California, Hélène and Wilfred landed tickets to The Price Is Right. Hélène made it to the final showcase, bid conservatively against an opponent she suspected had overbid, and won — a prize that came with a new car, the first the couple had ever owned. Host Bob Barker, told about her triplets and twins, joked to the studio audience that she had a “grand total of 23 children,” to a big laugh.

The Secret, In Her Own Words

Asked what got her to 100 and beyond, Hélène doesn’t point to any single trick. She points to gratitude, faith, and pace.

“If you take things one day at a time, you really have a wonderful life.”
— Hélène Joubert

She’s also been known to credit two ounces of Southern Comfort at bedtime — offered, by her own account, with a smile.

A Book, Written by Her Children

For her 100th birthday, Hélène decided she wanted her life written down. Physically unable to type or write by then, she told her stories aloud over a tape recorder through the late summer and fall of 2025. Her sons Dennis and Wayne Joubert transcribed and shaped the material into Joy Through the Journey: My 100 Years of Life, Marriage, and Raising Thirteen Children, published in March 2026.

Guest of Honor at the Multiples Convention

The 65th Annual Multiples of America Convention took place July 23–25, 2026, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick, Rhode Island. Hélène Joubert, 102 years young and the author of Joy Through the Journey, appeared as a guest speaker — sharing the story of raising thirteen children, including a set of triplets and three sets of twins, with a room full of parents living some version of her own beginning.

See Hélène at the Multiples of America Convention on Instagram →

A Life Measured in Days, Not Milestones

Hélène Joubert’s 102 years hold triplets and twins, a triple wedding of daughters, thirteen children raised on very little money and a great deal of faith, and a family now numbering dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her own accounting of it stays modest: a wonderful life, taken one day at a time.