Wedding day a date easy to remember
It is not unheard of for husbands to be accused of forgetting their wedding anniversary. Allan Douglas is not one of them.
Allan and his bride, Petrecia, who were married in Dunedin on New Year’s Eve 1953, celebrated their 65th anniversary at home in Kaitaia with friends and family, many of whom hadn’t been born when they exchanged vows.
The couple became acquainted as children — their grandmothers were sisters — and had been compatible “from the word go”, Petrecia said.
They had had relationships before Allan proposed, and Petrecia accepted, a year before they married, and, Petrecia said they had had 65 “good years of marriage”. Their lifelong friendship, Allan added, meant it had fallen to him to tell his future wife about the birds and bees, and the truth about Santa and the Tooth Fairy.
Their families immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland, aboard two different ships, around 1860, and both could claim that great-grandmothers were born on those voyages. He, 87 going on 88, was the son of an insurance inspector, while she, 86 going on 87, was of farming stock, growing up in Dunedin and at Hawea Flat respectively.
Allan began his working life the halfowner of a wholesale jewellery manufacturing business. In the early days Petrecia went to work to help pay the grocery bill, earning the sobriquet Cash Flow. When Allan “retired” from active involvement in the business, the couple bought a dry stock farm at Broadwood.
Broadwood had been a lovely place to live for 25 years or more, Petrecia said. The couple raised two sons, James (living at Awanui) and another working in the wine industry in Martinborough, and two daughters. One died some years ago, but Susan has stayed in the Far North, living just south of Kaitaia.
Both agreed that the world had changed beyond all recognition in their lifetimes, Allan saying letters home to Scotland from his grandmother had taken four months to get there, the reply another four months.
“By the time she received the answer she had probably forgotten the question,” he said. Now people Skype.
Meanwhile, both families had achievers to cherish. Allan’s grandfather was mayor of Dunedin in the 1920s, and Petrecia’s grandfather was once mayor of what is now the Dunedin suburb of Ma¯ori Hill, but Petrecia had the best story.
Prince Albert, the future King George VI, had managed to escape his minders, on a trout fishing trip on Lake Hawea with her father, who had cooked a meal over a fire, using just the one pot.
He had assured the prince that it did not matter, given that, once eaten, all the ingredients would be mixed together anyway.
If that incident was a breach of royal protocol, Allan’s proposal was very much by the book. He got down on one knee, Petrecia said, in a pub.
“She got me drunk, and it was all over,” Allan said.