60 years of happiness
SUMMERSTRAND couple Rev Theo and Rosaline Thomas plan to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary today with several of their seven children around them.
Retired principal and Anglican reverend Theo and fellow school teacher Rosaline met when they were both teaching.
The then Miss Jordan had the Standard 1 class at St Mark’s Primary School in North End and Theo taught the Standard 4 class. Romance blossomed the next year after he approached her parents to “court” her.
The couple dug out a photograph of their wedding day for The Herald and along with that, many happy memories.
“It’s a different sight to behold!” Theo said of the couple today, 60 years on.
The Thomases married at St Mark’s Anglican Church on December 21 1957, with a reception at the Moslem School Hall in Kempston Road.
Theo remembered it as “a very open affair” with young and old guests as well as many nuns, who had helped to bring them up, and five priests.
In the early days of their marriage, Theo said, Rosaline also was the organist at church, a Sunday school teacher and a Girl Guide captain, while he also taught Sunday school, led the Wolf Cubs and was involved in the council and other activities at church.
Despite their busy work and community schedule, they settled down to their new lives in a granny flat in Highfield Road, where four of their seven children were born.
Faced with a fifth baby on the way, however, it was time to move to their own home in Aubrey Street in Gelvan Park in 1962, one of the first houses “as Stanford Road in those days only went as far as Livingstone Hospital”.
A further two babies arrived, bringing the Thomas tally to six boys and one girl, and the couple have memories of 32 years in the family home before they downscaled and moved to the western suburbs.
When all the children were off to school, Rosaline returned to work and was principal at St Christopher’s Nursery School before becoming a substitute teacher until retiring in 1984. And Theo, although today officially retired, is still active in the ministry, giving weekday services at St Margaret’s Church in Summerstrand.
Two heart attacks 10 years ago forced him to retire and that is when the couple gave up their home in Kabega Park and moved to Dunant Park retirement village in Summerstrand.
They are looking forward to seeing many of their family members today.
“One or two of them are unable to make it but most will be there,” Theo said.
Their children are Glenn, Jeremy, twins Lindsay and Lynette, Aubrey, Theodore Junior and Trevor. The couple also have 13 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
“We taught our children and grandchildren to live by . . . the following motto: be good, be kind, be loving!” Theo said.