FIFTY YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 40, 17 February 1938, Page 11

FIFTY YEARS.

HAPPY MARRIAGE. ! "THE LOVELIEST WIFE." HUSBAND SOBS HANDSPRINGS. Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) CHRISrCHURCH, this day. -An indignant snort was followed by two nimble handsprings on the sun■bathed lawn. "Fit! I should say so," commented eighty-year-old Mr. A. C. | Cooper, of Christchurch, after he had : entertained a reporter with this brief : display of his gymnastic ability. To-day is a red-letter day in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, for they have completed fifty years of married life. "I have the loveliest wife yon could find anywhere," staunchly contended Mr. Cooper. "She is one in a thousand." JUo away with you," said his blushing wife, as she effected a hasty retreat. Comfortably esconced beneath the shade of an apple tree, which was shedding its ripe fruit on the ground, Mr. ; Cooper recalled the past with pleasure and regarded present trends with a somewhat doubtful eye. Wide Sports Interests. Mr. Cooper has always been a keen sportsman, and fishing and shooting , were among his interests. He played Rugby football in Dunedin, and for a term he was president of the Referees' Association. His cricket experience was gained with the Excelsior Club, and in a sensational finish to one match he gained the cup for his team by doing the "hat-trick." To-day he plays bowls with the Edgeware Club, and just the other day he skipped a rink, the agreegate of whose ages was 326. And his rink won. ' The garden of Mr. Cooper's home is 1 a model of neatness. He does all the 1 work himself, and just at the present J time he is busy drying out his homegrown tobacco. ' Longevity runs in his family. A " brother, Mr. W. H. Cooper, a former ' Mayor of Christchurch, now aged 93, is ' living in Gippsland, Australia; while a sister. Mrs. Palamer, Dunedin, is 5)4 not : out. "Life is worth living at 80," Mr. Cooper observed emphatically. [ And as he farewelled the reporter. ■ Mr. Cooper added: "We arc growing old I together, and all' the time we come nearer to each other."