1950s: Christmas card that rekindled romance from 50 years ago

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We all get cards at Christmas time from people we have not seen for a while. But one Christmas a couple of years ago, Alan Spencer received a card that was to change his life – and kindle a long-lost romance. Hilary Burton reports on a moving love story that has spanned a lifetime.

It was Christmas 2003 and among the usual Christmas cards Alan Spencer had received was one with a name he had not seen for a long time.

It was from Canada, from a woman named Jean Fryer.

Fifty years before, Alan and Jean, then Jean Harrington, had courted for a year. But the romance had ended and both had married other people.

Alan had not heard from Jean since the 1960s. But suddenly, out of the blue, here was a card with her phone number on.

Alan, 75, of Mickleover, said: “It would be about a fortnight before Christmas when I got the card.

“She had written: ‘Dear Alan, if you are still in the land of the living, let’s make contact.’

“She gave me her phone number, so I rang it and we were on the phone for ages, remembering the past 40 years.

“It was so easy to talk to her. There was none of the awkwardness you might expect when you talk to someone you haven’t seen for years.

“It was just as if I had seen her last weekend. But then she is that sort of person. She has a great personality, she is effervescent and well-liked by everybody.”

The upshot of the phone call was an invitation for Alan to visit Jean, 78, in Canada, where she lives on Vancouver Island in a waterside home with its own landing stage. He went there the following summer and spent a happy six weeks there.

Romance was rekindled for the couple, who were widowed within months of each other in 1997.

And now Jean wants Alan to move out to Canada to be with her. But concerns about his health and his age mean he’s not sure it’s such a great idea.

The tale of long-lost love found again starts back in 1952 when Alan, then in his early 20s, met a young staff nurse at a dance at the Assembly Rooms in Derby.

Jean Harrington was a nurse at Derby City Hospital and the pair clicked at once. They stepped out together for the next 12 months, going to dances and balls together and even taking a trip to Dinard in France for a holiday.

Alan, of Mickleover, said: “I used to call her my lucky charm as she went with me for my first interview for the firm I eventually worked at for years.

“People always said we made a lovely couple and wondered why we never stayed together, but she moved from the City to take up an industrial nursing position at Rolls-Royce, and our paths parted. We just seemed to drift apart.

“Eventually she met and married Leonard Fryer, a Canadian Air Force officer who was stationed in the UK and was on a course at Rolls-Royce.

“They got married in 1954 and moved to Germany and from there to Canada in 1956, as I found out from her mother.

“They lived in Vancouver and then they went over the water to live on Vancouver Island, where Jean lives today.

“He started a plant hire business and she went back to her old career of nursing, becoming a matron in a nursing home there.”

Alan himself married his wife, Eileen, in 1961. He said: “I had a very happy life and, as far as I can gather she did as well, though I think it was hard for her, moving to a foreign country.”

The next time he saw Jean again – and the last time for almost 40 years, as it turned out – was when she came back to the UK in the late 1960s for her mother’s funeral.

Alan said: “She made contact with me and we met up then.

“We all went out to dinner, Jean and her step-father and my wife and I, and we swapped addresses.

“We kept in touch for a couple of years and exchanged Christmas cards but then that stopped and I never followed it up at the time.

“So it wasn’t until 2003, when I got the Christmas card, that I heard from her again.

“So I called her and we were talking and talking. We discovered that her husband died in January 1997 and my wife died in the October of that year. After a bit, she asked me to come and stay with her, so I said I would love to.”

Alan said the six-week holiday in summer 2004 was “a tremendous time. She’s got a beautiful home. It’s just gorgeous.

“It was wonderful to see her again and we carried on just as if we had never been apart.

“I had a wonderful time. She has some great friends over there and I was made most welcome.

“Of course, a lot of her friends are from English stock and they are very proud of that and only too keen to tell you all about where they come from. Jean has a real American accent now. It’s all ‘Gee’ and ‘You guys’.

“She lives in a lovely house in a cove on Vancouver Island with acres of land behind it and a log cabin as well.

“You get a lot more land for your money over there. Her late husband kept a boat there and it is a stunning setting, but very isolated.

“You have to drive a mile just to pick up your post and the nearest hospital is an hour-and-a-half away in the island’s capital, Victoria. It’s a 24-hour journey from Derby to get there, ending with a two-hour drive across country.

“Because Jean is on her own, she admits that the place is getting a bit much for her and she is talking about the day when she will have to sell up and move to a condominium, as they call it there, in Victoria.

“Of course, what she wants is for me to go over there and live with her.

“Neither of us has any children and I have very few relatives here in the UK, only my sister and my nephew.

“But I’m 76 in January and I think I’m too old to pull up roots and go to live over there. And there are health concerns as well – I have suspected angina and high blood pressure, and there could be problems with healthcare in Canada.

“But we get on so well together, I do think that if Jean had made contact with me the same year that Eileen and Leonard died, or the year after that, when we were both a bit younger, I think we probably would have got married and I would have gone to live over there.”

Since the visit, the couple have kept the relationship going via the telephone and through letters.

They write or speak at least once a month and often more, although the eight-hour time difference means they have to watch what time they call.

Alan was delighted to be able to send Jean the recent Bygones piece about nurses who trained at the City Hospital in the early 1950s, as she knew most of the names and faces.

He said: “She was so thrilled. She told me she remembered so many of the names and faces, such as Miss Doncaster, Sister Martin, Sister Prosser and Sister Moon.

“I’m trying to persuade her now to sell up and live with me in Derby, but she said to me: ‘I’ve got you, Alan, but as far as I know I haven’t got anyone else in England.’

“Of course, she has lots of friends there in Canada she wouldn’t want to leave.”

Looking at pictures of the couple then and now, it’s clear that, though so many years have gone by, they are still the same people they always were, with a love and affection that has spanned a generation and crossed the ocean.

Alan said: “It’s like when you see someone you haven’t seen for years; you always know straightaway who they are.

“To my eye, she hasn’t changed at all from the girl I knew all those years ago.”

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