2023-09-10 16:41:00
The Bastogne municipal council hall also hosts wedding ceremonies and weddings of exceptional duration. On Saturday, around eleven o’clock, the room was packed, many having to stand for lack of enough chairs. An audience of press representatives deployed cameras, cameras with impressive telephoto lenses and notebooks to immortalize a unique moment.
In front of the guests, seated quietly, Raymond Mertes, a hundred years old since May 4, leans over and listens to the latest recommendations from his young wife, Gilberte Guiot, a few months younger than him and a hundred years old since August 29 .
“We are gathered for an incredible event, specifies the mayor of Nuts City, Benoît Lutgen. Research has been carried out, there are no other couples of centenarians in Belgium, barely ten in Europe. world does not reach a hundred years, only 0.2% of the Belgian population is a hundred years old, 2,500 people in total, the vast majority of whom are women. Arriving at this age together, and in good shape, while still living at home , it’s really great.”
In 1923, Raymond was born in Eupen, Gilberte in Étalle. Throughout their careers, military then in the administration of contributions for Raymond, sewing and drawing teacher for Gilberte, they lived in Arlon, Vielsalm, then mainly in Bastogne.
They were married on September 28, 1946 and will therefore celebrate their 77th wedding anniversary in a few days. From their union, two children were born, Patrick and Christine. They have six grandchildren, Mélanie, Laurence, Adrien, François, Thibault and Morgane and three great-grandchildren, Ellie, Raphaël and Maxime.
They can be described as “just”
The couple, who love traveling throughout Europe and whose spouses know every nook and cranny, have particularly fond memories of their honeymoon in Locarno, at a time when this type of journey was not common.
Rigorous and deeply honest, Raymond, during family vacations by car in France, had the hobby of stimulating the neurons of his offspring by making them recite the numbers of the French departments. Gilberte, a caring woman open to others, devoted a good part of her life to volunteering in various associations such as the Red Cross.
“There is much more than complicity between them, notes their son-in-law, Thierry Delperdange, -. There is a lot of love. They live with a lot of accuracy. If I had to define them in one word, I think that I would use the word ‘righteous’. They are truly righteous.”
This content is not available in this configuration.
Find out here.
1694390117
#Love #eternal #youth #centenarian #couple #Bastogne