A COUPLE brought together through the war effort of the Forties celebrated 60 years of marriage yesterday.

Edward and Hilda Cherry met across the drawing room table at North-East Marine Engineering's Wallsend yard on the Tyne, where he was a draughtsman and she was a "lady tracer".

Drawing room socials helped them to get to know each other better, and it emerged that Hilda was a classmate of Edward's, sister Edna.

The couple were married amid post-war austerity in 1947, when rationing restricted them to four wedding photographs.

Mr Cherry went on to become a merchant marine engineer with a Hartlepool-based company that became part of Shell Tankers.

He went ashore in 1950 to work at the Exchange Building, on Newcastle Quayside.

He later worked for Ropner Ship Management, in Darlington, rising to technical director, until retirement, in 1988.

Mrs Cherry kept her drawing office job while her husband was at sea, and moved on to work in a solicitors' office, in Hartlepool, before the birth of the couple's only child, daughter Pauline, in 1952.

The Cherrys have lived in retirement in Merryoaks, Durham, not far from Pauline, from Newton Hall, who is a college maths lecturer.

Yesterday's post brought an array of cards, including one from the Queen, who is approaching her own diamond wedding celebration, in November.

Asked for the secret to their long happy marriage, Mr Cherry put it down to: "Working together and being happy together."

The couple enjoyed a meal out yesterday, and a bigger family lunch is planned at Whitworth Hall, on Sunday, followed by a party for friends and relatives at home later in the day