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    Maurie and Joan Lawson celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on October 30, 2024.
  • Hero image
    Maurie and Joan Lawson celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on October 30, 2024.
  • Hero image
    Maurie and Joan Lawson celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on October 30, 2024.

Milestone for teenage sweethearts Maurice and Joan Lawson

Maurice Lawson suggests ‘it had nothing to do with me’ in getting together with his future wife Joan.

On the cusp of the couple’s 70th wedding anniversary today, Mr Lawson, 91, said: “She’s since informed me that she had her eye on me years beforehand.”

Teenage sweethearts, the Lawsons revealed they became a couple in form four at Horsham High School.

“That’s where we first came into contact,” Mrs Lawson, 89, said.



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The couple then spent their entire working life either side of Horsham Town Hall in Wilson Street.

“When we left school, we started work at the same time. Maurie started at The Horsham Times on the Sunday, and I started at Brown and Proudfoot solicitors on the Monday,” Mrs Lawson said.

The Rev Howard Kettle married the pair at Horsham’s Wesley Methodist Church before the newlyweds honeymooned in Adelaide.

The couple then had four children and raised three and now have seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Sticking to a working-life formula, the couple retired in the same week in 1998.

Mr Lawson said the pair achieved two of three major retirement goals. “We went to China and Japan but never made it to Europe,” he said.

Mrs Lawson added: “We were going to do wonderful things, then I broke my leg, then Maurie broke his leg, and then he was in hospital for a couple of operations and that’s where the past 20 years have gone.”

The couple agreed that success to having a long marriage was to have mutual interests and to understand each other.

“We did everything – we rode motorbikes, went fishing and played tennis together,” Mrs Lawson said.

The entire October 30, 2024 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!

The entire October, 30, 2024 edition of AgLife is available online. READ IT HERE!