A photograph of World War II veteran Aris Poulos collapsing outside a New York maternity ward on April 22, 1946, moments after learning his wife had given birth to triplets, became a sensation in newspapers across the United States and abroad. Eight decades later, it is still unclear whether the faint was real.
A Father's Triple Surprise
The 1946 Photo of a Father Fainting at Triplets
After 22 months fighting the Nazis in Greece, Aris Poulos came home to a new challenge, and the photograph of his reaction ran in newspapers from the United States to Australia.
Poulos, aged 27, was waiting at the glass window that separated him from the maternity ward at Lutheran Hospital in New York, expecting to see his newborn son. Instead, three nurses appeared, each holding a baby. According to the Hebrew news site Kikar HaShabbat, which revisited the story in its weekend magazine, he stared in astonishment and then keeled over from shock and excitement. A photographer captured the moment: Poulos tilted backward as the medical staff stood around him laughing, the three infants in their arms.
Dr. Karl Strauss delivered three healthy boys, one after another. They were named Thomas, known as Tommy, Thenie and George. Their mother, Nora, was 24.
In the 1940s there were no routine ultrasound scans and no images of babies before birth, and parents often had to wait until delivery to learn even basic details about the child on the way. Medicine was more limited, childbirth carried real risk and uncertainty, and fathers were generally barred from the delivery room.
Nora, née Stavros, married Aris, who was born in Greece and had immigrated to the United States with his parents and brothers, in 1940, and the couple settled in New York. In 1943, Aris enlisted in the US Army. He joined a reconnaissance unit that formed part of an Office of Strategic Services operational group fighting the Nazis in Greece, and was among the troops sent overseas to battle German forces. After the war he returned home to Nora, and the couple prepared to start a family.
The picture quickly made its way into the press. Newspapers across the United States published it, presenting Poulos as the proud father seeing his three sons for the first time, and the story soon crossed the ocean. The Australian paper the Sydney Sun ran a feature on the family in October 1946.
Many papers had fun with the image. One quipped that Poulos "didn't faint from excitement, he realized he would never recover financially." Another writer joked that it would be the last sleep he would get for some time.
The coverage did not end with the birth. Newspapers kept following the brothers, publishing photographs and documenting their growth. By August 1946, articles and pictures were showing the family's daily life and the challenge of raising three babies at once. One notable photo shows Aris walking down a hallway carrying all three sons, while another captures the whole family in a quieter moment away from the media attention.
Nora found her own creative solutions. She used an extra-large baby carriage built to hold all three infants, which she affectionately called her "jeep." It was not a stroller that could be folded and carried up the stairs, but a bulky contraption that became a fixture of family life.
The Record-American of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, ran the story under the headline "Baby attack overwhelmed war veteran." The report read: "Aris Poulos faced the dangers of war overseas for 22 months. But when he returned to the home front, he discovered that the struggle there was much harder, as this picture illustrates well. Only a moment earlier he learned that the triplets held in the arms of nurses at Lutheran Hospital in New York were the gift his wife had given him. Smilingly assisting the surprised father is Dr. Karl Strauss."
The Children's Aid Society in New York also stepped in, sending Anna Stewart to the family's home to help Nora care for the babies. Aris was a particularly hands-on father, and photographs from the period show him cleaning bottles, tending to the boys and holding all three in his arms.
The press continued to celebrate the triplets in the years that followed, with more articles published for their second birthday in August 1948. Ahead of their fifth birthday, the Children's Aid Society threw a special party to which three other sets of triplets were invited. The New York Times covered the celebration on April 20, 1951.
In December 1952, another article on the boys appeared under the playful headline "Trouble Comes in Threes." By then the family had grown with the birth of a daughter, Hope, and Aris and Nora were raising four children.
As adults, the brothers went their separate ways. Thomas became a successful businessman in mobile catering, George served in the US Navy and later worked to raise awareness of multiple sclerosis, and Thenie chose a private life out of the spotlight.
Aris died in 1994 and Nora in 2017. One question remains open: did Aris really faint at the sight of his sons, or was it staged for the camera? According to Kikar HaShabbat, the original Associated Press caption described his reaction as "feigned shock," raising the possibility that he simply played the part. Aris took the answer with him, but the photograph still draws smiles decades later.
