Diamond day for Ted and Betty

A family party will be held this weekend to mark the diamond wedding of Ted and Betty Hollands.

Their son Ian will pick Ted up from his house in Silvester Road and Betty from the High Beech nursing home in Dorset Road, and take them back to Fairlight Close where relatives and friends will celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary on Saturday April 4.

Ted and Betty have two sons - the older one is Alan who lives in Eastbourne and has a daughter called Jessica, while Ian has three boys of his own who are Robert, Michael and Adam.

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The couple also have a daughter, Marilyn, who lives in Blandford Forum in Dorset and will be visiting Bexhill for the party.

Ted was born in Reginald Road, and has his 90th birthday this year. He went to St Barnabas school for infants in Western Road, and at six years old attended St Barnabas school for boys in Reginald Road. When he left school he became an errand boy in Bexhill until 17, then worked as junior porter at Boots until war broke out.

He served with the Royal Sussex Regiment as a cook and transferred to the Army Catering Corps, serving in North Africa for a while but ending the war in the Royal Army Service Corps based in Italy and cooking for 500 men.

He stayed with cooking when he left the army and worked at the Cooden Beach Golf Club before becoming a post man, a job he stayed in for 28 years.

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He met Betty at this point through his sister-in-law who suggested he call up the "nice girl" who was working in the Royal Navy school for orphaned children in Collington Avenue.

Betty was born in St Maughans in Monmouth in 1927. When the war ended she found herself working as a cook in Bexhill as schools around the country began to re-open.

"On the off-chance I rang her up one night because I was feeling a bit down in the dumps and she agreed to meet me," said Ted.

"We just took to one another - she was a country girl and very quiet and unassuming, she had a nice smile. She agreed to come to the picutres with me - and that did it. We got married in April 1949."

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Having raised their family, Ted retired from the post office in 1979 and concentrated on his interests which include gardening, golf, snooker and bowls, both indoors and outdoors - he still plays at Egerton Park.

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