Meet Harold & Mary!

Harold Hewitt, 89 and wife Mary, 86, have been married for an incredible 65 years this year.

The Earlsdon Park residents tell us about how life led them to the Coventry village and how their enduring relationship works.

Harold: “Mary and I met in 1954, I had previously been in the Air Force and myself and two friends wanted to go to a dance, as we got on the bus there were three women on board. We asked if they wanted to join us at the dance, Mary was one of them. I ended up paying for Mary to attend and we danced together all night.

We have gone on to have our own wonderful family of children and grandchildren. We didn’t anticipate being married for 65 years! We got married on June 22nd, 1957. My background is in aircraft engineering, I was a flight mechanic in the Air Force after joining in 1952, I even got to work on the Spitfires! Mary was an auxiliary nurse and she used to hop on her motorbike to work each day.

Together we just gelled. We’ve been happy all these years, something just works. I retired from work in 1997 and sadly years later in 2014 Mary had a stroke. She recovered over the years but in 2019 when she had a fall at home, we knew we needed further attention, I decided we needed to go somewhere with more support. We moved to ExtraCare’s Earlsdon Park Village in 2019 when our friend met us at a stroke meeting we were attending and suggested we come here. She told us how much she enjoyed life at the village, so we visited and looked at it. We found our apartment and haven’t looked back! We have the beautiful morning sun till midday on our balcony and we know we’ve got support if we need it.”

After I spent a short time in hospital recently everyone came to check on Mary to make sure she was alright. That’s probably the greatest thing about living here!”