Pub meeting began 63-year love affair
IT WAS love at first sight when Louis met Maureen in a pub on Christmas Eve 1953.
He said: “She was an attractive girl and tall like me, which was unusual. But the thing that I liked most about her was her character. She was bright, intelligent and had a lovely presence.”
That night smitten Louis offered to take Maureen to midnight mass at a church and then walk her home, a chivalrous act which started a 63-year love affair.
They married in 1955 and had three children, Paul, Stephen and Sarah, moving around the country with Louis’s job.
But their blissful life took a tragic twist when at just nine years old Stephen died of leukaemia. Louis, a retired engineering draftsman, said: “It was a traumatic experience for the whole family. Maureen suffered from depression but was determined to get through it and, with help, did.
“She was amazingly strong, keeping her job as a headteacher and keeping the family together.”
Out of the tragedy the couple felt compelled to do something to help prevent other families from sharing their pain. They got involved in the Leukaemia Research Fund (LRF), a charity which has revolutionised treatment and improved survival rates for the cancer. The Janaways set up fundraising branches firstly in Hinckley, Leicestershire, then in Macclesfield, where they have lived in the 1970s. Over two decades these branches raised £750,000. Maureen was recognised for her effort and met the late Princess Diana at a garden party at Buckingham Palace.
Although Maureen never taught in Macclesfield she never stopped learning and in her later years studied the history of art and got a degree in French.
Louis said: “Maureen was a great scholar. She had such a brilliant brain. Maureen’s decline form Altzhiemers’s has been slow over the last 12 years. She is bedridden now and her memory is fragile. She recognises me and you can recover her memories, but it is gradually fading. It’s a sad end.”