Beverley
When I was a young teenager growing up in Box Hill the most important event that occurred in my life occurred the day I decided to start Christian Endeavour. I was thirteen years of age at the time and the year was 1951.
This unusual event occurred on the very day I decided to leave Sunday School for good. I had missed out on getting a prize that year. The Sunday School gave out really good book prizes for attendance and behaviour, and this year I had really tried hard to beat Max Sandalls, the son of our Sunday School teacher. But Mr Sandalls was never away, and he was always on time, and he always brought Max in his car, so Max had a perfect attendance record and lost no marks for being late.
We had to come from way down in the cow paddocks of Box Hill South. We were picked up by Jack Ferris in his orchard truck. Sometimes we would not be ready when he called for us. So I lost a few marks for lateness and Maxy Sandalls got the prize.
I was miffed. Max should not have been given a prize because he had to be there with his father. So I decided to give Sunday School away. I was feeling big enough to leave, although I knew that if I decided not to go, then my younger sisters and brother would not go either. But if they were not going to give me a prize, then I might as well leave!
Having just made up my mind that this would be the last day, the side door of our Sunday School hall opened and I can visualise the scene today as if it were yesterday an older, white haired lady walked in the door, and behind her was her daughter. They were both strangers. Her daughter was beautiful, with the fairest hair. A light seemed to shine from her.
Ever willing to welcome strangers, I went straight up to them before any adult turned their way. Her mother very politely asked, if there was a Christian Endeavour in the Sunday School. I equally politely replied that there was a really good Christian Endeavour which met every Friday night, and as a matter of fact, I was about to join it myself that very week, and apart from that, we had a very good girls class in the senior Sunday school and I would be pleased to take her daughter to her new teacher, and as our classes were near each other, if I could help by introducing her to the other young people I would be only too pleased to be of service. These offers we made without pause.
So my interest in Sunday School, Christian Endeavour and in things religious took an immediate turn upwards. I attended evening church services when I discovered that Mrs. Vernon and her daughter attended. My very keen interest in things religious, had more to do with an over working pituitary gland than anything else.
Soon I asked that lovely new blonde girl who had started to attend, to accompany me to a school play, an awful rendition of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. It must have given her ideas, because we started to go out together after that first 13 year old venture, and we have been going there ever since. Beverley and I married and have had great difficulty convincing our four children when each was thirteen, that they were too young to start dating!
After that it became a nightly journey to the Box Hill railway station where she would return from her school at Camberwell High School and then make her way home to Victorian Crescent. It was much easier for her to get off at Mont Albert railway station and walk home but she chose to come to Box Hill station and I felt I was making progress as to this decision. My mother was concerned why I was always late home from school on these occasions. She knew I had taken up my new interest in athletics and I used to spend time after school training but there was an additional lateness that could not be explained by athletic training. One night my mother came to the station for some reason or other and arrived at the very moment a train pulled in and I was seen to rush up the ramp to joyfully welcome this girl she had never met in the Camberwell High School uniform. My mother stopped us as we both walked down the ramp and told me I should get home at once and mow the lawns. Mowing the lawns was my mother’s answer to every problem. If ever I was moping around the house the answer was mow the lawns. If ever I started to talk about girls the answer was mow the lawns. If ever I was involved in a fight with my younger sisters or brother the answer was mow the lawns. And now, confronted with a female entering in my life the answer was the old reliable mow the lawns.
Over the next few weeks I found out some interesting things about Beverley. We had been born only a week apart and less than a mile apart. We both went to the same baby health centre as children and both our mothers were widows.
Her father had three older children when he became a widower and married Edith who was then about 30. They had four children and Edith brought up the seven children who stretched over a period of ages from Beverley, the youngest, a baby to the eldest who was more than 30.
From that moment on our lives became involved around all of the same interests and activities.
At the Box Hill Church of Christ there was a very active drama group which used to produce religious dramas and go from church to church on a Sunday evening presented these dramas, usually biblical in nature, and usually dressed in first century style. I travelled with the drama group sometime playing parts but mostly hiding in an empty baptistery acting as a prompt to the rest of the players.
Beverley was keen on tennis and played in a local team. My interest in tennis took an immediate increase upwards and we enjoyed then as we do now, our games together. During winter she played with a girls basketball team and for a short period of time in between winter athletics, soccer, rugby and Australian Rules football, I travelled with her to matches and even for a while became a registered umpire for women’s basketball.
In between our studies, our sporting activities and our church attendance there were numerous youth groups and activities about which I have spoken before and we became inseparable companions through all of these.
We used to attend church in order to sit together regularly and with several other couples always sat in the very back row of the church. We paid little attention to our minister, Mr. W.A. Wigney. There were occasions when in the middle of a sermon he would stop and glare at the back row and make some comments like, “Would the young people in the back row please keep their laughter down”.
However if Mr. Wigney had been more observant he would have perhaps preferred our open laughter because when we weren’t laughing we boys were frequently using our penknives to carve into the back of the church pew in front, a heart with the letters G.M. loves B.V. and the like. Thirty five years later I sat in the same back pew of that church and looked at the time honoured carvings and reflected on the initials who had pledged their true love on the back of the church pew.
Not that we didn’t take some time out to try other waters. There was an occasion or two when I was known to look at another girl and to walk them home for a while and there was one occasion when a handsome tall Dutchman came to our church and most of the girls were swept of their feet with his blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. On one occasion Keith the Dutchman asked Beverley if he could walk her home and with European courtesy brought her a box of chocolates and a flower. He expected a nice two mile walk home together in the dusk of a summer’s evening but the romance never had a chance to blossom as the flower, for they had hardly set off walking to Beverley’s home together before the boy from Box Hill rode up on his bike and placing the bike and himself between the pair of them walked the rest of the distance home, dipping every now and then into Keith’s box of chocolates enjoying it. Beverley was upset by this persistence but she saw the reason behind it and we have been going steady ever since.
Our teen years were filled with Christian activities and service, youth camps and social clubs and Christian Endeavour. All of the time we developed a deep friendship that grew into respect which grew into love and for the past 29 years we have been partners in marriage and in ministry.
Who would have thought what might have happened that day I decided to leave Sunday School, when the side door opened and an elderly lady and her daughter stepped in and I saw a light shining from her.
At least I saw that light and I often thought about it as I used to walk home up Devon Street, opposite the cow paddock, to No. 55 Birdwood Street, Box Hill, a great city which was only a village, where the adults were kind and where the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
