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Platinum wedding anniversary: Marriage is fresh as a daisy 70 years on
Jack and Millie George who are celebrating their platinum wedding anniversary. Photo supplied
A LOVING husband of 70 years from Peterborough still says it with flowers every week.
Jack Mills (89), of Queen Street, Yaxley, near Peterborough, has ensured his marriage to Millie (88) has stayed fresh through the decades by buying her flowers almost every week.
On the odd occasions where he cannot present his wife with a bouquet, one of his three daughters steps forward to keep the romance blooming.
The couple celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary this week and ever since leaving the armed forces in 1946 Jack has sought to make the weekly gesture, with special bouquets on birthdays, anniversaries and Valentine’s Day.
Jack said: “It’s money well spent. It’s just natural if you like someone you would spend you last ha’penny on them.”
But it was a coin of a different value which brought Jack and Millie together.
When he was 18, Jack, who was living in Farcet Fen, and a friend saw Millie in Farcet and flipped a penny to decide which of the pair would ask her out on a date. Jack called ‘heads’ and started more than seven decades of romance.
Referring to the match-making, Jack light-heartedly said: “She has gained a bit more value since then.”
It was already a historic date – September 3, 1939 –the day when Britain and France declared war on Germany.
On imagining how his life would have been if the coin had come down on tails, Jack said: “I would have got someone else who would not have been half as good as she is.”
The couple wed in Peterborough Register Office in Fletton on January 17, 1942, just weeks before Jack left the country for National Service with the 4th British Division of the Royal Corps of Signals. Jack served as a dispatch rider in Algiers, Egypt, Italy and Greece before returning home after just shy of five years.
The couple had three daughters during the 1940s, Shirley, Dee and Jo, and today have six grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Jack, who spent about 20 years at Perkins ahead of his retirement in the late 80s, said the secret to a long marriage was “give and take” and being “caring and sharing”.
He said: “I think I’m very lucky to be able to say I’m 70 years married. I don’t regret one little bit.”
He added: “We have been blessed with everything as far as I’m concerned.”
Daughter Dee (64) said: “It doesn’t happen to a lot of couples. They wanted to underplay it, but I felt it was quite important that it was recognised.”
Gifts throughout the years
PLATINUM is the traditional gift in the UK for 70 years of marriage, but anniversary gifts do not stop there.Couples reaching their 80th wedding anniversary should expect a gift of oak.
Earlier gifts include cotton on the first anniversary and paper for the second (reversed in the US), leather for the third, fruit and flowers for the fourth and wood, for the fifth.
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Weather for Peterborough
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 11 C to 23 C
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Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
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