Tom and Cathie still inseparable after 65 years

Bellshill couple Tom and Cathie Eadie celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary last week.
Bellshill couple Tom and Cathie Eadie celebrate their 65th wedding anniversaryBellshill couple Tom and Cathie Eadie celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary
Bellshill couple Tom and Cathie Eadie celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary

They first met when they were classmates at St Joseph’s School in Blantyre, but having left school at 14 their relationship started properly two years later when they met at a dance in Hamilton.

However, but for fate it may never have done any further, as having arranged to meet the next week at the dancing Cathie never appeared.

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Tom was down, but not out, and was showing Treasure Island on a projector he had bought at a house when Cathie walked in – as she just happened to be a relative of the homeowner, unbeknownst to Tom.

From then on the couple have been inseparable and were married at St Joseph’s Church in Blantyre on July 16, 1955.

They would live in Bothwellhaugh for a time before the village was cleared and moved to Bellshill just in time for Christmas 1964.

Tom starting his working life as a miner, most notably at the Blantyre Farm pit before decided to make a career out of his interest in photography and became a well-known freelance working on everything from Royal visits to the time a mouse escaped from a piece box on a corporation bus.

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Tom’s work would regularly appear in the likes of the Daily Record, BBC, STV and the local papers around Lanarkshire, still occasionally appearing in the Times & Speaker to this day, although he officially “retired” two years ago.

In 1977 he started the Lanarkshire Life newspaper with James McManus, but it would only last 23 weeks, and Tom was back to freelancing.

Cathie worked in the cobblers at Blantyre Co-op and was later a cashier at the George cinema in Bellshill before giving up work to raise their five children.

Not that Cathie wasn’t kept busy with her own activities helping to run a community group to support alcoholics, working with the Frank Ferguson Centre and being a member of the Union of Catholic Mothers.

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Nowadays she enjoys flower arranging, sewing and getting in the garden.

Tom has been making a film about the village of Caldervale, where he grew up, which was demolished in 1962 having been built in 1901 to accommodate mine workers.

The family has grown to include eight grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren (with another on the way).

They had started planning a big party before lockdown, but instead celebrated in the garden with close family.

Tom and Cathie received flowers and a card from North Lanarkshire provost Jean Jones, but unfortunately she was unable to visit them in person.

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