Still happily married after 70 years
Couple celebrate special anniversary with friends and family
When Barbara Scheele first met her husbandto-be more than 70 years ago her first thoughts weren’t of marriage. “He was just my best friend’s brother,” she says.
Barbara and her best friend Betty were both boarders at Iona College and Barbara had stayed with Betty during exeats, meeting Ken but not paying him any extra attention.
Until it came time for Barbara to be presented as a debutante at the Iona Ball.
“My father was too nervous to present me, so Betty came up with a solution. She said ‘my brother has a dinner suit, he can present you’.”
That proved to be the couple’s first date, of many. They progressed to attending dances at local halls all over the district — Tutira, Kaiwaka, Putorino . . .
“The country halls were well used in those days,” Barbara says. A country hall was also the place where Ken proposed to Barbara: Outside a dance at the Elsthorpe Hall. Barbara says she “got the shock of my life.”
She said yes, but at just 18 her father said it would have to be a long engagement.. He didn’t want her to get married until she was 20.
So the young couple waited, and in the meantime they kept on dancing...
“It was a lovely engagement,” Barbara remembers. “We went to dances and balls, Ken would come up to my family’s farm at Tutira on his Army Indian motorbike, dressed in his Army greatcoat, with a leather helmet.”
Ken and Barbara got married on Valentine’s Day in 1952, at St John’s Cathedral in Napier.
Ken says “it wasn’t recognised as Valentine’s Day then, that came much later. I remember being there with my groomsmen, shaking in my boots, I think we had a beer . . . ”
Barbara had her dress and bridesmaid’s dresses made in Taradale, with the bridesmaids in a rainbow of colour. Heading off on their honeymoon, the couple spent the first night at Waipukurau’s Tavistock Hotel.
“It was the first time I’d ever stayed in a hotel — it was very flash,” Barbara remembers.
After a South Island honeymoon they settled down on the Scheele family farm at Patangata, where Ken farmed and ran an earthmoving and agricultural contracting business.
They had five children — three boys, a girl, then eight years later another boy.
Sadly they lost their eldest son at nearly 18, in a car accident.
“He was a lovely boy, a good sportsperson and had captained the CHB Ross Shield Team . . . he lives on in our hearts,” says Barbara.
Days were busy but happy — the family was involved in the tennis club at Otane, and shared a bach at Kairakau with Betty and her husband.
“Out husbands would drop us off at the beach at Christmas with all the children — eight kids — and we’d be there for six weeks. They were wonderful holidays. Our husbands would join us in the weekends.”
By the time the children were married and having families, Ken’s contracting and earthmoving business had allowed them to buy three farms, which they farmed as a family.
But it wasn’t all hard work. Ken built a boat and did a lot of fishing off Kairakau. He is patron and a life member of the Kairakau Marine
Club, a life member of the Lloyd Morgan Charitable Trust — through Lions — and also a life member of the Waipawa RSA.
“He still plays the piano accordion to me several nights a week,” says Barbara.
Ken bought his first piano accordion at about 15, added a second one on his way home from serving with J Force in WWII and played at many dances over the years. He still plays for residents of Woburn and Mt Herbert rest homes — “all the old songs”. Ken and Barbara celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary the week after Valentine’s Day, at the Waipukurau Club, surrounded by friends and family — which now includes 15 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren “and four more on the way — it’s lovely,” Barbara says.
“There were so many little ones there and they were so good, it was just a lovely day.
“Three of my bridesmaids were there — the other lives in Australia.”
Having moved to Waipukurau nearly three years ago the couple find town living a big change. Barbara misses the animals but keeps busy as a member of Waipawa Family Fellowship and the CHB Garden Group — her garden is her happy place, she says — and attends Pakeke on a Thursday.
The move was necessary as Ken had been unable to drive for many years due to failing eyesight, and Barbara was tiring of the drive to
town for shopping and appointments.
They find it hard to put in words what has kept them so happily married for 70 years. Ken says forgiveness is important and Barbara says having a close family has meant a lot to her.
But, she adds with a laugh, “Ken can’t see well and I can’t hear well . . . so we have to stay together!”