Together for 71 years ... gone within 4 minutes of each other
UNTIL ill health intervened, Wilf and Vera Russell had not spent so much as a night apart since they married at the end of the Second World War.
So it was somehow fitting that, after more than 70 years of marriage, the inseparable couple should die within four minutes of each other.
Yesterday, their family told how the great-great-grandparents were childhood sweethearts – parted only by Mr Russell’s RAF service in North Africa and Italy during the war. The ex-engineer was 93 when he passed away at a care home on Wednesday at 6.50am, a year after being diagnosed with dementia. His wife, 91,
followed in hospital at 6.54am – before nurses could break the news. Mrs Russell, a former cake shop worker, had been in Leicester Royal Infirmary since January after failing to recover from an infection.
Granddaughter Stephanie Welch, 44, told how Mrs Russell’s health started to deteriorate when her husband did not recognise her during a recent visit to see him at the nearby home in Wigston.
Mrs Welch said: ‘I went to visit her and she opened her eyes and asked me where Wilf was. The last thing she said to me was: “We’re a right pair, aren’t we?’’. I think she was waiting for him to go.’
The couple were 16 and 18 when they met – eventually marrying on September 5, 1945, three days after the surrender of Japan. They settled in West Bromwich, and went on to have three sons.
And the secret to their success? Mrs Welch said: ‘Vera very much spoke for them and Wilf went along with whatever she said.’
The family are now planning a joint funeral in Great Glen, Leicestershire.