JUNE and Maurice ‘Bonner’ Lawes have stuck together through thick and thin throughout 60 years of marriage.
Various mishaps including a flooded house, a bout of malaria and an unwanted suitor have been bumps in the road on the way to the couple’s diamond wedding anniversary today.
They will be celebrating the milestone at a barbecue in the garden of their Weymouth home on Saturday. The couple, who have 10 grandchildren and three great grandchildren, have requested that their only presents be the company of loved ones.
June, 80, and Maurice, 86, met on a golf course under bizarre circumstances. A man was chasing June and Maurice swiftly became her knight in shining armour.
She said: “I was running and this fellow was following me. Maurice was playing golf and had just come back from India, where he had caught malaria while he was there with the RAF.”
Six months later, a marriage proposal came and the couple tied the knot at St Andrew’s Church in Preston. June said: “I made Maurice go and see my father and ask if he could marry me. I listened to him ask my father and he said to Maurice: ‘Are you sure? She’s a bit of a problem.’ “I burst through the door and said, ‘What do you mean?’”
The couple lived in Overcombe and Preston where they had their sons and daughter – Tim, Andrew, Hugh and Rebecca. After having her first three children in hospital, disaster struck when June decided to give birth to Hugh at home.
She said: “The drains were blocked up and I was in labour. There was water leaking out all over the floor and Hugh was coming out. Maurice told me to put a cork in it.”
After his spell in the RAF as a maintenance engineer, Maurice worked as a carpenter’s apprentice to learn the trade.
June ran a guesthouse for 20 years in Holland Road, Weymouth and also worked as a house mistress for ten years in the Sacred Hearts convent in Carlton Road North.
She said that healthy arguments had helped keep the couple going over the years.
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