LAKE OSWEGO – In their darker-haired days, Sherman and Sheridan Everett could pass for each other, and sometimes did.

Nearly a century has brought out few differences between the identical twins, who still share the same twinkley blue eyes, the same wavy white hair, the same broad brows.

But at 99, Sheridan sits taller, his smile broader, his body a little sturdier. If Sherman notices, he doesn’t say.

The brothers are the oldest known living set of male identical twins in the United States, according to the nation’s twin-tracking network of researchers and social organizations.

Sheridan recently rode from his home in Salem with one of his sons to Sherman’s apartment at an extended living facility in Lake Oswego to mark their Sept. 6 birthday. The twins were born in 1902 in Buckley, Wash.

The two grew up on a farm near Sandy. As boys, they took the streetcar from Gresham to Pleasant Home and then walked back toward West Orient School, delivering newspapers on their shared route. On Sundays, they covered the route in a horse-drawn buggy.

“We just wanted to be together,” Sheridan says.

Still, once in a while they’d split up to fool classmates, relatives and even employers.

“We wouldn’t do that,” says Sherman with deadpan humor. “Do you think we would?”

In their early 20s, Sherman took over a job at a Sandy sawmill for Sheridan so that his brother could work on building the Aurora Bridge over the Pudding River. Sheridan says the sawmill boss never knew the difference.

Soon after making the switch, Sheridan looked up from his bridge work. He somehow knew: Sherman had been injured.

Sheridan’s thoughts went immediately to the rail cars at the mill that toted unusable lumber to the incinerator and then rocketed back to the starting point, pulled by a cable.

“I had a feeling in my mind that Sherman got hit with a slab car and had to go to the hospital,” Sheridan says.

Indeed, a slab car had hit Sherman, breaking his leg.

Sheridan worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, supervising contractors, from building the Portland airport to constructing bridges and dams. His twin built bridges, including both Highway 101 spans at Depoe Bay.

The two saw less of each other while they were raising families and working long hours. But when they retired, they went on fishing trips on the mighty Columbia River, bringing along their grown sons. They kept up those fishing trips into their early 90s.

The men shared a love of gardening, each showing a flair with roses.

Sheridan remains able-bodied enough to live in the light-yellow ranch home he bought with his wife in a Salem subdivision in 1972. Caregivers help him daily. Neighbors check on him, and he gets Meals-on-Wheels.

But Sheridan does not like to dwell on the contrasts between them now.

Of Sherman, he says, “first it was a cane, then two canes, then a walker, then a wheelchair to get around, and that’s where he is today.”

Of himself, Sheridan says, “I use a cane.”

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