WHITE RIVER – In this day and age, when so many married couples find they are not a match for each other and call it quits, 60 years of marriage is quite unusual.

Lowvelder joined Tommy and Joy  Drummond at their 60th anniversary in the Lowveld National Botanical Garden on Thursday.

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The celebration was, however, a bittersweet one, as this day marked the birthday of their grandson Martin Oosthuyzen, who died in a freak accident on the R40 about seven years ago.

Tommy and Joy got married in Gweru (formerly called Gwelo), near the geographical centre of Zimbabwe in 1958. She was 17 and he was 22. “He was a real cradle-snatcher,” said Joy. They met in her hometown when he was called there for compulsory military service. “He was a real windgat,” she added. “As I was walking, I remember falling down and told my friends that I fell down right in front of  Mr Drummond,” she said.

“She was much better looking than my present girlfriend at the time, and I decided to take her on a date, and then we got married,” said Tommy.
“It was God, and the fact that he was almost never home, that kept us together,” Joy joked.

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He was incredibly sporty and competitive from a very early age, and when he was not on the rugby field, he was in the boxing ring. “Our 60 years together, and our five kids are our greatest legacy,” she says, and added that they have had a rather quiet life. They say that their happiest time was on a farm in Shabani. He was a cattle farmer and she spent most her time looking after the kids, painting, knitting and making jewellery. “We had no TV, hence the five kids, almost exactly two years apart,” she said.

When he was almost 600 cattle strong, they were forced to move due to political unrest and relocated to Swaziland, where he worked at Bulembu Mine from 1979. Thereafter, they moved to White River, where he worked in the sawmill for 20 odd years.

They sold their house and moved to a farm in Peebles, “where we are staying in bed late, and just generally enjoying our retirement. Where our children used to be our whole life, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are now our life,”
said Joy.