Diamond couple sparkles

By Casey Neill
BELGRAVE couple Bob and Nona Griffiths say love, togetherness and their Christian faith are the keys to their 60-year marriage.
The pair could hardly believe six decades had passed when they celebrated their diamond anniversary last month.
“It just seems like yesterday,” Mr Griffiths said.
They marked the milestone with their two daughters, sons-in-law and five grandchildren.
“The weather’s just about right because it rained most of January that year,” Mrs Griffiths said.
The 85-year-old recalled entering West Brunswick Methodist Church sheltered beneath a new white bed sheet as rain fell on 1 February 1950.
And inclement weather was not the only hiccup to the start of their married life.
Mr Griffiths, 83, was studying pharmacy after serving in the navy when he met his future wife at Brighton Methodist Church.
“I still remember coming home from one of the church meetings and saying to my older sister ‘I rather fancy that Nona Henley, do you think she’d go out with me?’ ” he said.
“My sister said ‘Well, you won’t know unless you ask her, will you?’ ”
“To my surprise she was waiting to be asked.” They were engaged on 11 November 1949.
Mrs Griffiths continued to work for two years after they married while her husband finished his studies.
“And that was tut-tut,” she said.
“Getting married and working – oh dear. It was really not easy to take from older people. I just battled on.”
Finding somewhere to live was also a struggle.
“We found somewhere to put our heads, so we managed,” Mrs Griffiths said.
After a year, her deceased parents’ estate was divided. She used her share to put a deposit on a two-bedroom house in Camberwell and her husband secured a government war service loan. Here they lived for several years and had two daughters.
“And then I got the crazy idea,” Mr Griffiths said.
He was working in a CBD pharmacy when one of his sales staff invited him to meet her mum in Belgrave.
“Her mum said to me ‘are you interested in opening a pharmacy? They need one down at Tecoma’,” he said.
“So we sold our little home in Camberwell and we bought a property in Tecoma.”
He opened the Burwood Highway pharmacy in 1958 where he served the town and its surrounds for more than 30 years.
And it wasn’t just kids of the human variety that sought his medical advice.
“I got woken up at 2 o’clock one morning by a fellow who had a sick goat,” he said.
“I had a veterinary book so I looked it up and found out what we should give him.”
“We gave it to him and we think the goat recovered.”
Mr Griffiths amalgamated his service with Belgrave’s Bronco Bjelan Pharmacy when he turned 65 and worked part-time for another 12 years.
As well as being the town pharmacist, Mr Griffiths was on the school committee and in 1961 with two others started a youth club. Mrs Griffiths served the kinder board and mothers group and both were keen members at Belgrave Methodist Church.
“Everything we’ve done, we’ve done as much as we can together,” she said.
In 1965 Mr Griffiths joined Upwey Bowling Club and his wife followed a year later.
“I was pestered because they said ‘your husband’s joined, why don’t you?’,” she said.
Mrs Griffiths was secretary of the now disbanded ladies’ section for 19 years.
Her husband was the men’s section secretary for 28 years and still plays in Saturday pennant competitions. He’s now the Belgrave Probus Club secretary.
The couple recently together joined the Ferny Creek Horticultural Society.
“Not that we’re good gardeners, we’re far from it,” Mrs Griffiths said.
“But we are interested.”
Mr Griffiths said after 60 years of marriage they were “still going strong”.
“I think the main secret is we just love each other, always have done,” he said.