Wartime sweethearts reunited after grandmother sees Spitfire mechanic on TV decades after they said goodbye

Joe Roddis with Betty Drury at Goodwood in 2009 after flying in a Cap 10B
Joe Roddis with Betty Drury at Goodwood in 2009 after flying in a Cap 10B

When Joe Roddis and Betty Wood said a tearful farewell at Worthing railway station in 1944, they did not expect to meet again.

The wartime Spitfire mechanic had fallen in love with the WAAF corporal but they could not be together because Wood had a fiance who was returning from the Middle East.

But true love waits, in this case for 60 years.

The sweethearts were reunited after Wood, by then a widowed grandmother, switched on her television to watch a documentary about Spitfires, and was amazed to see Roddis appear on screen.

She wrote to the television company, they met - fittingly enough, on a railway platform - and finally had their happy ending, setting up home together when Roddis was 83...

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