A COUPLE who did not see each other for 43 years after being young sweethearts are getting married.
George Highsmith, 67, and Shirley Graham, 65, from Whitley, will tie the knot in the first wedding ceremony to take place at the Shaw Country Hotel, later this month. They met at a ballroom dance club in Abingdon, Oxfordshire in 1957, and romance quickly blossomed.
Mr Highsmith said: "I was in the Royal Navy so I would come up from Portsmouth to see Shirley whenever I got the chance."
"We both knew it was true love," said Mrs Graham. "It wasn't like it is today when you have mobile phones and emails to stay in touch.
"Our courtship was mainly by letter, and every so often I would wait at the village phone box at an arranged time and George would ring me from the docks." By 1958, the couple decided they wanted to get married, but Mrs Graham's father would not agree to his daughter marrying a serviceman.
"I asked Shirley's father if we could get engaged before I left for a two-year tour with the navy, but he said no," said Mr Highsmith.
Mrs Graham said: "In those days if you were under 21, you had to have your parents permission before you could get married.
"Because my father said no, we could not go ahead with it."
When permission was refused, they decided to make a clean break, although just before Mr Highsmith's ship left port, the couple arranged to meet up in Oxford. However, they both waited in the wrong location and assumed each other had not turned up.
For the next 43 years, their lives took completely separate paths. They married other people in the mid 1960s and after completing his service in the navy, Mr Highsmith emigrated to Canada in 1976.
He married for a second time in 1985 while Mrs Graham remained with her husband for 38 years, and lived in Corsham for much of that time. It was not until 2000 that the couple got in touch with each other again.
Mrs Graham saw in the newspaper that Mr Highsmith's sister had died, so she sent the family a card of condolence. They started writing and arranged to meet up in 2001 when Mr Highsmith was on holiday in the UK.
Mrs Graham said: "I arranged to collect George from Chippenham train station and it felt like I had been waiting for him for 43 years.
"When I saw him we automatically hugged each other, kissed on the cheek and walking back to the car we started holding hands without thinking about it."
"Meeting again felt like it did when I used to see her after coming back from the navy," said Mr Highsmith. "She had the same smile and I recognised her right away."
He left Canada in 2002 and moved into his sweetheart's cottage in Whitley. They got engaged last April and are now looking forward to the impeding wedding at the Shaw Country Hotel. Gabrielle Lewis, the owner of the Shaw Country Hotel, which got a licence to conduct weddings in January, said: "They are a lovely couple and I'm so pleased they will be the first to get married at our hotel."
"It has just been like stepping back in time and carrying on with our old lives," said Mrs Graham.
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