Making the magic last

(A similar version of this family memoir appears in this month's Glebe Report. Shelagh Rogers read an earlier version on her CBC Radio request program on our 40th wedding anniversary on 14 February 1997)

On Sunday September 25, 1955, I was off duty in the family practice where I was the youngest physician, running late for my game with three friends at a modest golf course on the southern outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia.  I had delivered a baby in the small hours and called at the hospital on my way to the golf course to make sure mother and baby were OK. To catch up time I took a road I didn't normally use to get to the golf club.

Along this road I picked up two young women hitch-hikers, as was customary soon after the end of the war and of petrol rationing. The two I picked up were heading for the South-East, and could not get there on that road.  I said I'd take them to a junction a few miles further on, where they could cut across to the road they needed.

They introduced themselves, Louise and Jan (Janet). They were nurses, Louise from Zürich in Switzerland, Jan from Christchurch in New Zealand. They had been nursing in Perth for a year, had just arrived in Adelaide from the west. They intended to see as much as they could in a few weeks, were making ultimately for Sydney, where they would part and each would go home. All this emerged in a conversation lasting perhaps ten minutes, until we reached the corner where I should have dropped them.  But by then I had decided I wanted to see more of Jan and I made a snap decision that changed our lives. I was so late my golf partners would have started without me. I'd have to find someone else, a stranger probably, to partner.  It was a lovely spring day, song-birds nesting, magpies yodeling, kookaburras laughing crazily.  I offered to drive them to the south coast, show them the sights along the way, then bring them back to Adelaide and they could set off on the right road next day.

It was a magical day. Everything sparkled in the Spring sunshine, and so did our conversation as we told each other who we were, what we had done with our lives to that point, what we hoped for in the future. It got quite hot by mid-day, so I shed my heavy winter pullover and rolled up my sleeves when we stopped at the little town of Yankalilla to buy pies and lemonade for our lunch.  Louise took a photo of Jan and me as we sat on a hillside above the beach, earnestly talking.

Jan Wendelken and John Last, 

Above Yankalilla Beach, Sept 25, 1955

We were talking about sickness, poverty and the unfairness of life, and how nurses and doctors could help make life fairer. Jan was near tears as she described tragic situations she’d encountered. By then I knew I wanted to see much more of her. 

We drove to Victor Harbour, where a little island is connected to the mainland by a causeway along which an ancient horse-drawn tram trundles back and forth during the tourist season. Not that day though, it was too early for the tourist season. We walked across the causeway and around the island, gazing at huge ocean breakers all the way from Antarctica, dodging the spray as they beat against the rocks on the exposed southern side of the island.At the end of the day, we exchanged addresses. I wrote a 'Welcome Home' letter to Jan that evening and not long after she got home to New Zealand, I had my first letter from her. Soon I had a drawer full of letters, and another drawer was full at her end: 125 hand-written letters 8, 10, 12 pages long between November and May: twice weekly letters back and forth across the Tasman Sea. We never ran out of things to say!  Jan's family name was Wendelken, and like many in her family, she was nicknamed Wendy. During our intense exchange of letters, an old-fashioned 19th century courtship by correspondence, Jan became Wendy, and she was Wendy ever after. 

Jan Wendelken/John Last Correspondence, Oct 1955-May 1956
(125 letters, mostly 8, 10, 12 pages)

Wendy came back to Australia in July 1956. I drove to Melbourne to collect her from the airport and bring her back to Adelaide where she nursed at the Adelaide Children's Hospital for the next six months, while we conducted a more conventional 20th century courtship. We were married on February 14th – Saint Valentine's Day – 1957. That photo Louise took as we sat talking on the hillside on the coast near Yankalilla hung above our marriage bed ever after, coming with us to each of the homes in which we lived. It is among our most precious family possessions. 

Signing the marriage registry, 14 February, 1957, St Peter's College chapel, Adelaide

We had a wonderful, rewarding, and richly interesting life together, until Wendy died in 2010.  It's safe to say that we made the magic last.

                                                                        Wendy was an expert seamstress. She made all her own clothes, including her wedding dress, and the gorgeous shot silk evening dress she wore to our 50th wedding anniversary banquet. These photos don't do justice to either.

John and Wendy at Golden Wedding anniversary banquet, 14 February, 2007
Beckta's Restaurant, Ottawa