18 Wednesday, They Want to Split Up : They’re Quints--but in Name Only

Sara and Amy Kienast glare at each other over feet propped on the dining room table and argue the finer points of rock ‘n’ roll music. They both like it, but Amy wouldn’t be caught listening to REM.

And so it goes with the Kienast quintuplets: They are so much alike yet so different.

Sara, Amy, Abby, Ted and Gordon turn 18 on Wednesday and hope the day marks the end of media-mobbed birthdays and the beginning of separate lives.

“We’ve been five all our lives. Now is our chance to be one,” said Sara as her brothers and sisters nodded in agreement. “We want to make a name for ourselves, by ourselves.”

After years of press scrutiny, well-publicized financial problems and the suicide of their father, the quints are a steely bunch and proud of it.

They also are distinctly individual. Each plans to attend a different college and four have picked schools far from the spacious farmhouse in this New York City suburb where they grew up.

“It’s about time,” Abby said. “I’ve been with them for 18 years. I could make do without seeing their faces every day.”

None plans to tell new friends he or she is a quintuplet.

“Why should we have someone look at us and think of four different people?” asked Sara.

The quints gained worldwide attention when they were born Feb. 24, 1970, after their mother, Peggy Jo Kienast, took fertility drugs.

At first, many offers of help and endorsement opportunities clothed and fed the children. But financial pressures began a few years later and an anonymous source saved them from eviction by providing more than $115,000 to pay off mortgages and property taxes the Kienasts owed.

In 1984, the quints’ father, William, committed suicide after his plastics business began to falter.

At that most difficult time, reporters and photographers camped outside the family’s home, making the family angry.

They now say they have put his death behind them.

“We couldn’t dwell on it,” Amy said. “Mom wanted us to get on with our lives.”

Peggy Kienast says she’s looking forward to her children leaving home.

“I’m all for parenting and children, but I don’t live through my children. I’m looking forward to this next step,” she said. “You’re worn out by their senior year.”