Love at first sight proved to be the real deal
TRUST and good companionship are only some of the reasons why Gerald and Felicity Towers have been happily married for 60 years and will celebrate their diamond wedding tomorrow.
This week they received a card from Queen Elizabeth II of England, congratulating them on their anniversary.
Gerald, 86, and Felicity, 81, of Summerstrand, met through a mutual friend in 1955, after Gerald had been putting off the meeting.
However, after seeing the Mill Park beauty for the first time, he was captivated and asked his friend to introduce them.
“I had been brushing off this ‘blind date’ and one day I was driving up Cape Road and I saw two beautiful ladies but my eyes were on the brunette.
“I called my friend immediately to ask because he had mentioned that this ‘blind date’ lived in Mill Park, and it turned out Felicity was the blind date,” Gerald said.
But Felicity had also spotted him at the PE Opera House.
“He was on the stage acting as an escort in a Diana Decker production and I fell in love with him instantly, it was love at first sight,” Felicity said.
Their first date was a swim at King’s Beach on New Year’s Eve before they danced the night away at the Walmer Country Club.
After a whirlwind romance of just two weeks, Gerald proposed and the coupled tied the knot in Grahamstown on June 30 1956.
“She was so beautiful and I was afraid someone else would get her,” Gerald said.
To celebrate their anniversary, the couple will head off to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, where they will watch their illusionist grandson Brendon Peel in action.
Gerald was born in the United Kingdom and moved to South Africa in November 1952, after getting a job at EH Walton Packaging, while Felicity was born and bred in Port Elizabeth.
Gerald later worked as a sales negotiator for Aspen Pharmacare, which was then known as Lennon, while Felicity worked as a secretary at the Natal Building Society. The couple have two children, Bernard Towers, 59, who lives in Newport Beach in America and Terry Peel, 54, who lives in Port Elizabeth.
They also have five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.