Right at Home Clients Celebrate 75 years of Marriage

Right at Home clients Jack and Helen Frost, one of Farnham’s longest married couples, celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary on 21 May. Their love story began in the late 1930s when they were both just 19 years of age.

Jack, who was originally from Mitcham explains how they met. He says: “I was visiting my older brother in South Harrow and he told me to go to the dairy to buy a pint of milk from ‘old blue eyes’ and that’s when I first met Helen.”

Helen began working in the dairy shop when she left school at the age of 17 to look after her father and two brothers following the death of her mother from pneumonia.

After leaving school, Jack worked for a firm of paper manufacturers and exporters until he joined the RAF and went to war as a navigator on a Bristol Beaufighter. Helen followed in Jack’s footsteps and was one of the first women to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

Recalling the day he proposed, Jack remembers how having first got permission from Helen’s father, he went down on bended knee to ask Helen to marry him. Back home for a few days’ leave the couple married but it was another two years before they could begin their married life as Jack was sent overseas the day after their wedding.
Helen says: “I was given three days leave so that Jack and I could marry at a church in Jack’s home town. I remember how we had to get a special licence from the Bishop of London to allow us to get married on a Sunday.

“We married in uniform, so I didn’t have a bouquet although my Auntie Edie did give me a bunch of flowers and I was issued with some new shoes, which my uncle commented on because the soles were so shiny!”  

While most of Jack’s family attended the wedding, Helen’s brother was in the forces and was unable to make it. Jack’s sister provided the guests with a meal which Jack says must have been quite a challenge with just wartime rations.

After she was demobbed, Helen went house hunting for the couple’s first married home. Jack was still in Singapore so Helen found herself having to send all the paperwork overseas for him to sign before she could secure and move into their new home in Mitcham.
After leaving the RAF, Jack went back to his pre-war employer which involved him travelling to paper manufacturing countries across the world. The couple moved to Farnham in 1973 when Jack’s firm relocated to Basingstoke.

At the age of 97 and 98, Jack and Helen continue to enjoy their independence thanks to a little helping hand from the Caregivers at Right at Home.

Caregiver Adriana says: “Jack and Helen are a remarkable and loving couple and it is clear to see how fond they are of each other. On behalf of Right at Home, I wish them many congratulations on their 75th wedding anniversary.”

Jack and Helen have two sons who live in South Wales and Dartmoor, six grandchildren and one great grandson who lives with his parents in Cape Town.

Asked about the secret for a long and happy marriage, Helen says: “Try to avoid quarrels. If you do get in one, forget it as soon as possible – let it drop and start again.”

Jack says it helps to have a sense of humour and that it is important to take things as they come. Asked to give his advice to newlyweds, Jack says: “It is best not to argue, not always to agree, to talk it over and then forget it.”

Jack and Helen spent their wedding anniversary with family, enjoying each other’s company.