Moville man celebrates 60th wedding
We have rescued this from the archives of the old website. It was originally posted in June 2012.
60th wedding anniversary
A Moville man celebrated his Diamond Wedding on July 2nd.
Gerry McLaughlin was born in the River Row and later moved with his family to Bath Terrace.
Betty McLaughlin was brought up in Greenock.
Betty was 15 when she first went to Moville with a friend at the end of the war and she met Gerry on their first trip there and it was love at first sight despite their first introduction being when they threw stones at each other.
They kept in touch and got engaged in Moville in 1950.
Marriage Proposal
When Gerry proposed in the shelter off Montgomery Terrace in Bath Green, Betty replied “I could think of nothing more sweet, than walking through life with you”.
And walk through life and all its ups and downs she did walk with him, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, through all the good times and all the bad times.
There can’t have been too many nights that they spent apart from each other.
Married
They got married in St. Mary’s Church in Greenock in 1952 and had their first son Gerard in 1953.
That was followed by ten more, Lily, Michael, Anna, Peter, Liam, John, Maura, Kathleen, Patricia, and Angela.
They also had 24 grandchildren and an increasing number of great grandchildren.
John Hume
At Gerry’s 80th birthday party in Kealy’s in Greencastle, another guest at the restaurant was Nobel Peace Prize Winner, John Hume, who lives locally.
He delighted Gerry and his family by singing three songs and presenting him with his 80th birthday present, a PC.
Gerry and Betty were celebrating with their Greenock and district based family at the weekend and will go over on Wednesday to Moville where they have several children to celebrate with them there.
Despite a couple of health scares last year both are in rude health and looking forward to ‘partying’ with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Good News
There could be some good news for Movillians.
It’s always said of them that they bring the good weather with them and they arrived on the very first day of the good spell we had a while back.
Maybe with their arrival on Wednesday the weather will make a turn for the better this time too.
Note:- Betty died recently aged 88 and I thought I would put this article up again of happier times in her memory.