By Brendan Rees
Two teenage friends have reunited after 74 years after moving into the same aged care home in Cranbourne East.
Noela Midgley, 89, was stunned when Valma Burston, 90, approached her in the lounge room of the Langford Grange Aged care home and said: “I know you.”
“I said ‘how do you know me?’ Noela replied. “I said ‘I’m 89 years-old’.”
“‘You and I made our debut when we were roughly 16-years-old,” Valma told her.
The pair discovered they attended their debutante dance – the Oakleigh RSL branch Victory Ball held at Oakleigh Memorial Hall in 1945 after the war ended.
Valma said: “I don’t know what it was I saw her but as soon as I looked at her I thought Noela.”
Noela says Valma “had the cheek to say ‘you haven’t changed at all, your looks are the same’.”
The pair today are inseparable, spending their days talking, playing cards and scrabble.
“We just picked up where we last left off,” Valma laughs.
“The things that she can remember is unreal,” Noela says.Noela adds she tries to walk as much as she can, visiting Valma in her room to “make sure she’s alright.”
They who both grew up in Oakleigh, and recall taking their brothers to their debutante dance as “they did everything for you”.
Noela says her father was one of the first students to attend the opening primary school in Tooradin in about the 1890s.
At the age of 18, Noela married Laurie McDonald and had three children. They were married for 20 years until she remarried a man named Frank Midgley.
Valma, also at the age of 18, married Frank Alison and had three children before he died nine years later. She then married Lenny Burston for 30 years.
Noela has seven grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren, while Valma has eight grandchildren, and 11 great grandchildren.
“I’m starting to fail a bit to remember all their birthdays,” Valma laughs.
