Do you believe that love is everlasting and transcends all boundaries and time?
If you don’t, this story will certainly make you believe so!
Frederick Paul and Florence Harvey were childhood sweethearts. However, it took them a lifetime to get reunited and get married.
Way back in the 50s, when Fred and Florence were teenagers and lived in Wandsworth, a small town in Newfoundland and Labrador province, Canada, Fred was courting Florence and the two were inseparable. They walked to the church together, watched concerts hand in hand, and stole kisses in between their classes.
However, in 1955, Fred’s father asked him to visit Nova Scotia on his behalf for his sister’s wedding. Fred then went to Toronto to visit his brother and stayed there for an year to earn some money. And when he came back home after an year, Florence had moved out. She had relocated to St. John’s to attend a teaching course for summer school.
Unfortunately, this was the end of their teenage love story and the two went their separate ways.
Meanwhile, Fred found his wife Helen while Florence met her husband Len. Both started their own families, becoming parents and then grandparents and living their happy lives.
The two were hardly in touch with each other other than a brief five-minute conversation when both families returned to Wandsworth for a Come Home Year celebration.
In 2017, however, Florence lost her husband after 57 years of married life. And last year, Fred lost his wife due to multiple health issues.
And it was the grief of losing their loved ones that got Fred and Florence to reconnect. In February 2020, the two got back in touch again, thanks to their brothers.
“We both have brothers in a seniors’ home in Marystown, so while I was visiting my brother, his brother was there,” Florence recalls. “He said, ‘I’m gonna give you Fred’s number.” Florence says Fred’s brother said he’d asked Fred if it was OK, and Fred said it was but added “she’ll never call me.”
A day after Valentine’s Day, on 15th February 2020, Florence called Fred to offer him her condolences on the demise of his wife. And the two took off from where they had left. They remembered their old times and spoke about their families and the spark between the two had rekindled!
“I never thought it would go past that,” Harvey, 81, told CNN. “But we went from talking once a week, to twice, to three times, to every day for hours. We had really reconnected even though we hadn’t seen each other in all those years. I knew this was it.”
In July 2020, Florence surprised Fred by coming to Toronto for his birthday. It was here that the childhood sweethearts reunited after close to seven decades apart.
“When I found out she was in town and was coming to me, it was 10:30 at night. I ran out of bed and got dressed and wrote ‘Welcome Florence’ in chalk on the driveway and when she arrived, I walked to the car, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and I held her hand and I knew right away that she had taken my heart,” Paul said.
A mere three days later, the two were ready to get married! And the two childhood sweethearts got married on 8th August amidst a small gathering of their families.
Despite the fact that Fred was due for a surgery for stomach cancer, Florence decided that she wanted to get married to him and be by his side.
“I was diagnosed with cancer just before Florence came here and I had an operation for stomach cancer, so I think Florence is an angel. She came here knowing what my sickness was. She’s just an angel dropped out of heaven for me. I don’t know where I would have went without her,” Fred says.
“I don’t know if I would have gone through the chemotherapy, trying to get better from cancer if I hadn’t had the incentive of a love in my life. I think she’s wonderful. Just wonderful. And I love her very much.”
“We do everything together,” Florence says. “We just love being here together. He’s a very loving person, very caring. And I love every moment I spend with him.”
Once the pandemic ebbs off, the two plan to go back to their childhood town to relive the memories of their teenage years.
Wow! Isn’t this such a heartwarming story? Do let us know what you think about Fred and Florence’s love story in the comments section below.
