Most of us have a love in our past that we remember fondly, even if we’ve moved on and have made a happy life with someone else. Sometimes, people marry their first love, but most people don’t have that kind of fairy tale. However, occasionally, people get a second chance at what they believe was a lost love. Florence Harvey and Frederick Paul fell in love when they were teenagers in the 1950s, and it wasn’t until 70 years later, in 2020, that they found each other again, and in the middle of a global pandemic. When Fred was 18 years old, he was courting Florence in their small community of Wandsworth in Newfoundland.
However, in 1955, Fred’s father was working in a fishery and asked his son to travel to Nova Scotia for him to walk his sister down the aisle as she married. Fred did as his father wished, and from there, went to see his brother in Toronto. He ran short of cash and ended up having to take a job to make money. He ended up staying there for a year, and when he returned to Wandsworth, Florence had left. As it turns out, she went away to take a summer school teaching course and they weren’t able to get back together. Fred said that when his vacation was over, he returned to Toronto, with the two going their separate ways.
— Off The Main Page (@offthemainpage) January 18, 2021
It was in Ontario that Fred met his wife, Helen, while Florence met her husband, Len in Newfoundland. The two had happy and successful marriages, albeit separately from each other, as it should be. But then came Valentine’s Day of 2020. By this time, both of their spouses had passed away and the two both had brothers in the same senior living facility in Marystown. The couple suspects that their brothers were being a bit mischievous when they reunited the former lovers. When Florence went to see her brother, Fred’s brother was there and he said that he was going to give her Fred’s number.
— Off The Main Page (@offthemainpage) January 18, 2021
The brother had asked Fred’s permission, but Fred feared Florence would never call him. Florence held onto the number, but she waited a few days to call. She knew that he had lost his wife, so she thought she’d just call to offer condolences. She wanted to tell him that it gets easier because she had lost her husband three years prior to that. As the two reminisced and laughed at the memories they shared, and before long, they were having hours-long phone calls over the coming months.
— Off The Main Page (@offthemainpage) January 18, 2021
They talked on the phone for five months and in June, Florence suggested that she might be visiting her sons in Ontario, and one of them lives near Fred, just 10 minutes away. She said that it would be a good time to see if they were compatible. Well, they were, and Fred said it’s like she’s an “angel” who just dropped straight out of heaven for him. He said that he knew immediately that she had taken his heart again. On August 8, these two lovebirds got married and sometime in 2021, they’re going to visit their hometown to relive some old memories.
