Love me tender

LOVESTRUCK pensioner Jack Glover is heading for the gambling capital of the world to win his sweetheart's hand in marriage.

Jack, 68, and his bride-to-be Barbara, 64, are flying to Las Vegas for an "Elvis Presley" style wedding ceremony in the Little White Chapel.

Jack, of Cartmel Close, Westhoughton, whose wife died three years ago, first met divorcee Barbara on a golfing holiday in Spain.

Two years later they met up again and six weeks ago they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

Jack said: "Barbara is Elvis Presley mad. She's already been to Gracelands. We decided to make something really special of the event, something we would never forget.

We booked a wedding package and we'll be getting married in the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. The service will be based on the film 'Blue Hawaii' with an Elvis Presley look-a-like singing songs from the film and dancers from the local night club.

"Everything is organised for us by the tour operator. All we have to do is arrange the marriage licence with the local judge and, even then, we are taken there and back in a limousine."

The couple will arrive in America on September 10 and, after the compulsory four days' residency, will marry on the 14th.

Jack said his bride will be wearing a long cream wedding dress and he will be wearing a cream tuxedo.

On their return to Britain, the couple will be having a church blessing, attended by both sets of family and friends, and Barbara will be moving from Yorkshire to Westhoughton where she hopes to continue her nursing profession.

"She's already started to sell-up as we've ended up with two of everything. She's really looking forward to living in Westhoughton."

For many years, Jack has taken a golfing holiday in Southern Spain with a group of male friends but when his wife became seriously ill the holidays stopped.

Sadly, after 43 years of happy marriage, Jack became a widower in October 1997.

Losing a lifelong partner is always a devastating blow, but at least Jack had built up a circle of golfing friends, among others, and the following year he decided to take up the golfing holidays again.

Two days into the holiday at Magaluf, Jack was feeling a bit sorry for himself and, on his way out for the evening, turned to one of his golfing companions with the words -- "this has got to be the end of one life and the beginning of another".

How true the remark turned out to be. As he wandered into a bar he spotted Barbara.

Jack introduced himself and, from that moment on, they instantly 'hit it off'. "Within half-an-hour, I felt we had known each other all our lives." For the remaining five days of the holiday, Jack continued playing golf during the day but spent each evening with Barbara until he went home to Westhoughton and Barbara, a 64-year-old divorcee, returned to Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where she is a nurse.

Earlier this year Jack decided to book again for the golfing holiday -- "same island, same resort, same hotel."

Meanwhile, Barbara, whose home circumstances had now changed, had also returned to the same hotel. Sitting in a local bar on the second evening of his holiday, Jack was reunited with Barbara, but not entirely by chance. She had bumped into one of Jack's mates who told her Jack was on the holiday again.

She knew there were only two local bars that Jack frequented in the evenings, and she tracked him down! The pair carried on seeing each other for the rest of the holiday and continued the relationship on their return to Britain with Jack driving 69 miles over to Yorkshire every week.

"I wasn't going to let her slip through my fingers a second time, " he said.