GOLDEN WEDDING

Evening Star, Issue 23950, 30 July 1941, Page 11

GOLDEN WEDDING

MR AND MRS WAKEFIELD HOLMES 189M941

•Mr and Mrs Wakefield Holmes, who yesterday completed. 50 years of married life arc both old and wellesteemed citizens of Dunedin.

Married in Melbourne in 1891, they came to Dunedin the following year and have resided here ever since. Mrs Holmes made her first public appearance as a singer in Dunedin in an orchestral concert the year she arrived, and has been a well-known performer on the concert platform. In 1901 she visited England and studied singing under Signor Panzani.

Dramatic work, too, has claimed her attention. She made her debut with the Shakespeare Club in 1906 and in 1911 read the part of Lady Macbeth so successfully that she sustained that character for the society for 25 years, reading it by request at its jubilee celebrations.

Mrs Holmes takes a very keen interest in the Otago Women’s Club, especially in the music and dramatic circles and is now serving her third term as vice-president of the club. She also takes an interest in all stage work and

is an original member of both the Repertory Society and British Drama League. In the latter society she took the main part in ‘Gruach,’ the first play to obtain an A grade certificate and was also awarded the trophy for the best individual performance of the year as “ Queen Elizabeth ” in ‘ Will Shakespeare.’ Perhaps Mrs Holmes’s most successful appearance was with the Repertory Society in the name part in ‘ Dear Octopus,’ a part specially written for Miss Marie Tempest.

Mr Holmes has been well known in business circles in Dunedin for the past 50 years. They had a family of three, one son was killed, in the Great War; another son, Mr J. W. Holmes, lives in St. Clair, and a daughter, Mrs James Thompson, resides iu Auckland.

Mr and Mrs Holmes received sheafs of congratulations on the happy day, including a cable from Mr and Mrs W. S. Percy in London, the latter with Mrs Holmes’s other sister, Mrs J. T. Laing, being the bridesmaids of 50 years ago. Congratulations were offered at the last meeting of the Travel Club and also at last evening’s performance of the Repertory Society, when Mrs Richard Hudson, on behalf of the executive, presented a gilt fruit basket, filled with violets and carrying a card of congratulations.