It’s September of 1945, and a storm is raging.

Thirty-two-year-old Lorene Baker has gone into labor. The stress on her body has caused her blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels. According to the doctor, Lorene’s life is in danger. It might be best for her not to have the child.

The storm caused the electricity to go out. But Lorene was having this baby no matter what. An unexpected twist, it quickly became apparent that she wasn’t just having one child — it was twins. The father Frank Baker passed out when he heard the news.

“That is the absolute truth,” said Jayne Baker, one of the twins. “She said, ‘I’m having this baby one way or the other.’”

Due to the novelty of the twins’ birth with the electricity out, the Daily News picked up the story that year and dubbed them the “candlelight twins,” a term that caught on and followed them for the rest of their lives.

The newspaper wrote another story in 1995, commemorating the twins’ 50^th birthday. And now on Sept. 17, the twins will be 70 years old.

Jayne Baker said her mother didn’t know what to name them. She was thinking of Jack and Jill. But the nurse said she couldn’t do that, instead suggesting Jayne and Wayne.

Together they weighed only 10 pounds, and Wayne was born 10 minutes earlier, Baker said.

She said people used to tell her mother that having twins was no more trouble than having one. But Lorene knew that not to be true.

Jayne Baker remembers one day when the two got out of their cribs and waddled to the highway. “We had traffic stopped both ways,” she said with a laugh.

Their father Frank died when the twins were 7 years old, so their mother was left to care for the children — three including the twins’ older brother Robert — while working two jobs. She did the best she could.

The little family never had much, Baker said, but one Christmas she remembers how her mother managed to buy her a new doll and Wayne a new bicycle. Jayne was infatuated with her new doll, but Wayne’s boyish curiosity raised its head soon enough. It wasn’t long before she found her new doll with its head cut off; Wayne had wanted to see what was inside the doll.

It was antics like these that kept their mother busy, but they all grew up to become good kids, all of them motivated. The twins were always competitive, even with tying their own shoes.

“I’ve always thought he was smarter than me,” Baker said of Wayne. “We were achievers.”

Throughout the years, Wayne joined the U.S. Army, traveling to Vietnam twice and retiring in 1991, before earning a master’s degree and going to work in proactive therapy. Wayne Baker, who now lives in Chocowinity, said he still works two days a week. His other hobbies include woodworking, collecting electric trains, working on old cars and keeping a neat yard. He has one son with his wife, Joan.

Jayne Baker married at 18 and moved away to Georgia at one point, but she now lives in Hillendale and has three children. She previously worked in accounting at a pharmaceutical company. Jayne Baker went back to earn a bachelor’s degree in business decades after marrying, as sending her to college was never a thought for her family.

“Nobody said a word about me getting a degree,” Baker said. “That always bothered me.”

Wayne Baker said he used to love seeing the expression on people’s faces when they found out the brother and sister were twins — him with brown hair and green eyes and her with blonde hair and blue eyes.

As with many families, the business of life got in the way. Jayne’s starting a family and Wayne’s stint in the Army separated the twins for years. But neither of them forgot the value of home, and they eventually made their way back. Now the two are closer than ever.

“She’s always been my sister and I love her. … She’s a good woman,” Wayne Baker said, adding that she reminds him of their mother. “I know I can count on her if I need her.”