High School Sweethearts- “Florence and I met in school in 1952, got interested in each other and dated for almost three years.“
The following written content by Frederick Paul
I grew up in a small community with 21 families, a place called Wandsworth in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Florence and I met in school in 1952, got interested in each other and dated for almost three years. We’d go to concerts and to the movies to watch the old westerns—there wasn’t much entertainment, you mostly had to make your own.
We broke up because I left town. In 1954 my sister was getting married in Nova Scotia, I was 18 at the time and my dad said he couldn’t go to the wedding because he was too busy with work.
He said he wanted to give me money to go to Nova Scotia and walk my sister down the aisle even though she was six years older than me. I took the train across to Nova Scotia and when the wedding was over I had a bit of money left over and decided I would get on a train and go to Toronto because I had a brother out there. When I got out there, I stayed a while and then the money ran out so I had to get a job.
When I came back to Newfoundland for a visit, Florence had gone to summer school to become a teacher and had moved out of the community. I had a job in Toronto so I went back after my vacation, and so Florence and I didn’t see each other after that until 1997.
My wife and I went back to Newfoundland for a “come home” year in 1997 and I did see Florence just to say hello, ask how she was doing and how many kids she had. She got married in 1960 and she and her husband were together for 57 years and had five kids. I was also married in 1960, had two kids and was married for a few months less than 60 years. Sadly, Florence’s husband passed away in 2017 and my wife passed away in November of 2019. Read more from Newsweek.
