Together at last, after 70 years

KENT BLECHYNDEN/The Dominion Post

TOGETHER AT LAST: Joan Dean and Phil O'Neill were not allowed to marry at the time of Wiorld War 2. But mutual friends brought them back together in January, and the couple are finally about to marry, nearly 70 years after he first proposed.

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They were teenage sweethearts separated by war and sectarian prejudice. Now Phil O'Neill and Joan Dean are about to marry, nearly 70 years after he first intended to propose.

"She's a wonderful lady," said Mr O'Neill. "People don't say gidday to Joan - they hug her."

The pair, now both 85, first met at primary school in Masterton before crossing paths again after high school at the swimming club.

"She was a vivacious tomboy, always riding motorbikes," Mr O'Neill said. "She was just beautiful... She still is."

The pair were separated when World War II broke out.

Mr O'Neill, whose father fought at Gallipoli, was quick to volunteer.

He left for Europe with the second echelon of the second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1940, but planned to ask his sweetheart to marry him before departing.

Parental intervention stymied his plans and he set sail to Europe in a pique.

"Joan came to see me and said she was forbidden to see me because I was a Catholic.

"I blamed Joan, which was a very unfair thing to do. I think girls in those days did what their fathers told them to do."

Mrs Dean said: "I was the eldest and Dad always said, 'You have to set an example,' which irked me immensely."

She wrote to Mr O'Neill several times while he was away but, still stinging from his rejection, he did not answer.

Mrs Dean kept hold of the engagement ring he had bought for her, which he had hurled down the driveway of his family home after being told their relationship was over.

"I kept in touch with Phil's mother and older sister. They brought me the ring a few months after he left.

"I kept it in its damaged state for 30 years and then I made it into a dress ring."

Mr O'Neill fought with the 22nd Battalion on the Greek mainland and in Crete, where he was captured during the fighting at Maleme airfield.

He spent the remainder of the war in German camps, escaping on three occasions before being repatriated when the Soviet Union overran Poland in 1945.

Mrs Dean married and settled in Masterton. Mr O'Neill married in England during the war and later ran an aluminium business in Lower Hutt.

After their spouses died, neither expected to have a new relationship, let alone to marry again. Mutual friends put them in touch and a lunch date in Wairarapa in January reignited their relationship.

"Joan said, 'I'm not looking for romance, just a lovely friend'... I thought, 'Sister, you don't know where you're going,'" Mr O'Neill said.

They got engaged two months ago and plan to marry in Masterton, probably at the end of June.