Who would have thought Canberra could produce a war time love story for the ages?
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This is the remarkable tale of Ron and Nancy Metcalfe who not even death could tear away from each other.
Their love, which spanned 74 years, reached its final chapter recently when the former Turner and Hughes residents died within 10 days of each other.
Their son, John Metcalfe, told Gang Gang Ron had been the first to go, departing this world in his 95th year on March 19.
Nancy died on March 28, the day after Ron's funeral, aged 94.
"It was totally as if she didn't want them to be apart for a moment longer than they had to be."
Mr Metcalfe said neither would have wished for a better end.
"Mum and Dad were both alert, in good physical health and enjoying life in their family home of 46 years right up until their deaths," he said.
Then a public servant in the cables branch of the Prime Minister's Department in Canberra, Ron had met Nancy there before enlisting in the RAAF in 1941.
Their wedding photo, taken in 1946 after Ron's return from Labuan in Borneo, is a window into another world.
He is a ruggedly handsome and obviously happy man, who looks older than his then 26 years, dressed in full service uniform with his beautiful, beaming bride on his arm.
Ron wore his uniform, even though the war was over, because there was a special rate on weddings for serviceman. "And, of course, they saved money on a suit as well," Mr Metcalfe said.
These were frugal times. Rationing was in force and the couple, whose lives together had been put on hold for years by the war, were keen to buy a home.
It was a government property in Turner and the couple began a long association with that part of the city during which Ron helped establish the cricket club and even captained a premiership side.
He went on to lead the Canberra RSL for many years and was the first chairman of the Immigration Review Panel.
The family's Canberra residency was interspersed with periods of overseas service with the Department of Immigration which Ron had joined in 1947.
Mr Metcalfe said during the years Ron was away with the RAAF Nancy had an interesting war.
The 20-year-old, who had described Canberra as "just a country place" in a letter to her parents on her arrival here in 1941, was quickly admitted to the secret councils of a nation fighting for its very existence.
"Mum was in charge of a new cypher machine, a Typex," Mr Metcalfe said. "For a time she was the only one used for the "Most Secret" and "Most Immediate" cables and would often be called from her bed in the dead of night.
"She said it was a thrill if one came addressed "Most Immediate, Most Secret, Churchill to Curtin, Himself Alone".
When Nancy was introduced to the prime minister at the departmental Christmas party in 1942 she was described as "the head of the girls who work the `hush, hush' machines".
Nancy later worked for the ACT branch of the Australian Medical Association and also volunteered as a guide at Lanyon.
Ron's death, after almost 74 years together, hit her hard and raised the prospect of a lonely future she did not want to contemplate.
"After Dad died Mum, who had been brought up a strict Anglican and never swore, told us `I'm buggered'," Mr Metcalfe said. "She just didn't want to live without him."