In 1945, Lola, with her parents and brother, went by ship to the United Kingdom. They stayed with a family who lived alongside Stonehenge and Lola was "all over them".
During that visit she met with a girl who was to become a lifetime friend and they exchanged cards and messages every Christmas, and 25 years ago the United Kingdom couple visited Lola and Noel, bringing with them a bottle of whiskey as a gift. It had never been opened - until last Saturday's 60th wedding anniversary.
"We cracked it open," Noel said.
Noel was born in Hastings on May 13, 1933 and after school in Elsthorpe his first job was on a dairy farm where he remained for two years, milking 12 cows for cream in the days when there was no electricity on the farm, with a generator used to run the milking machines. He then took on casual agricultural work before eventually moving to the farm next door to Nook Farm.
Noel met Lola, still a school girl, through a mutual friend.
"Unfortunately, mum's parents didn't think too much of Noel," eldest daughter Denise said.
"They said he'd kill himself on his motorbike."
As a teenager Lola was a Hawke's Bay representative at netball in 1957, travelling to the South Island for the national championships. She later joined the Matamau team which won the Netball Cup in Dannevirke in the C grade. She also played badminton.
On leaving school Lola worked in Williams and Kettle in Waipawa as an accounts machinist on the old Burroughs machine.
"I liked to help people out and they would bring their typing to me," she told the Dannevirke News some years ago. "I would do the Plunket typing for the accountant's wife and football typing for the stock agent.''
Always fit, Lola would bike the three miles to catch the bus to Waipawa every day for work.
Noel didn't get his driver's licence until he was 21 and moved to work on Punch Wilson's farm at Tikokino as a shepherd, just before the couple's marriage on August 30, 1958.
The first night of their honeymoon was something to remember for all the wrong reasons, Noel told the Dannevirke News.
"Money was hard to get so we went to Kairakau Beach, out from Otane," he said. "There was a king tide and the waves came up to the veranda and I had to go out and move my International truck. Lola has never liked the beach since."
Denise and Louise were born while the family were living at Tikokino, before the move to Maraekakaho where they remained for a couple of years.
They next moved to Mangatakaheie for four years and son Craig was born. In 1968 they moved to Makotuku for three years, where Grant, Mechelle and Greg were born. Another move saw them in Ormondville for a short time before moving again to Whetekura and then to Te Uri where they eventually moved on a new home and purchased 100 acres next door in 1984.
Always a hard worker, Lola joined a shearing gang, before the couple purchased their farm and she rode a 280cc two-wheeler motorbike to get the job. She would ride from Te Uri to Norsewood at 6am in the freezing cold, work as a rousie and ride home again at 5pm. Not long after she went to the bank for a $5000 loan and started hand-rearing calves.
Lola continued rearing calves until last year and she won a number of ribbons at the A&P Show for her top quality stock. The calf herd was downsized from 400 to 100 calves in 2010, with the couple continuing to run Suffolk sheep.
Their input into their community has been huge, from establishing the Te Uri rural fire force, to running the local trail bike fundraiser for years. All of this as Lola lovingly cared for 0.4ha of well-developed gardens, brimming with perennials and roses. Noel has been busy lately picking buckets of daffodils from the farm driveway to take into Rahiri for Lola and the staff.
The couple had six children, but a son died aged 2. They have 16 grandchildren, 13 of them girls, and four great-grandchildren.
Noel and Lola have a reputation as being "brilliant dancers", who could dance all night and they were both ready last Saturday to show they could still had all the right moves, with Lola demonstrating her fitness with a few very high kicks.
