By Brendan Rees
When Ray and Raylene Heathcote met at Burwood Teachers College as students, they knew they were in for the long haul.
Today, the Berwick couple have spent 50 years together as husband and wife after marrying at St Bede’s Church in Balwyn North in 1968.
They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on Friday 7 December with family and close friends.
Ray is an avid cartoonist, having published his first cartoon in the Berwick News about Michael Tuck, a seven-time premiership-winning VFL player for Hawthorn Football Club in 1990.
Since then, he has been cartooning for the newspaper editions of the Cranbourne, Berwick, and Pakenham-Officer Star News in ‘Ray’s Say’.
“Dad says drawing cartoons was initially a way of helping children learn to read,” his daughter Tyrell Heathcote said.
“After he retired this continued in the form of cartooning workshops he was invited to run at many of the schools in the area.”
The couple, who have four children; Tyrell, Gina, Kellie and Ben, have had long and impressive careers in the education department.
Raylene was a principal at Don Bosco Primary School in Narre Warren while Ray has been a principal and acting principal at a number of schools in the area, with his longest stint with Hallam Valley Primary School in the 90s.
Ray then became a district liaison principal while Raylene shifted to an English and literature curriculum consulting role for the Catholic Education Office.
Tyrell, who contacted Star News to surprise her parents by publishing this story, recalled there was no family holiday or even a trip to the supermarket “without bumping into a past student.”
Ray is the current Berwick RSL’s welfare officer and past president from 2012-2015.
He was also president of the Victorian Principals Federation in the 90s. Raylene was a volunteer for St Michael’s after school First Communion classes.
