Una Dillon finally finds true love, marries for the first time at ’60-something’

PROVING that it’s never too late to find love, ’60-something’ year old Una Dillon walked down the aisle for the first time on Saturday to start a new life with her partner, Elmore Alexander, 63.

The retired educator had never dated all her life and had all but given up on marriage before making contact with her primary schoolmate, who insists that she doesn’t look a day older than her primary school days.

“I don’t think it matters when you start, so long as God is in it and that at the end you have lived a fulfilled life,” Dillon told All Woman. “And now you have all the time in the world to give attention to the person you are sharing your life with.”

The couple told of their decision to make the move into love after Alexander looked for Dillon for 22 years without success. Contact was finally made last year.

“We were actually schoolmates at Tulloch Primary school,” Dillon explained. “We were not boyfriend or girlfriend. He told me afterwards that he was admiring me from I was going to school but I didn’t know that.”

Alexander chipped in: “She was the neatest young lady in school. She took 10 minutes to sit down because she had to fix each pleat of her uniform…”

It was puppy love, he said, the kind of love where you have a crush on the person, but don’t have the courage to say it.

“Because of her involvement in the church since she was a young person I could not say it,” he said.

And so after primary school they parted company and he went off to the United States, where he still resides today.

It wasn’t until 22 years later that they ran into each other at their old primary school where his aunt, who was a teacher, was being honoured.

“This was when I was seeing him for the first time since I left primary school,” Dillon said.

Two dinner dates followed that meeting, and he recalled taking her home after dinner on the second date and standing outside her gate, asking if he could kiss her.

She immediately got upset and asked him if he was crazy while telling him he was too ‘forward’.

“I don’t know what he had in mind but I had just gone to dinner with my school friend,” Dillon chipped in, explaining that she still didn’t see him as anything else.

Again they lost contact.

“I always came back to Jamaica and tried to find her,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t check the directory.”

But a year ago, while visiting Jamaica, Alexander ran into Dillon’s brother and got his secret love’s contact information. This, after asking her brother one question, “Is she married?”

He was delighted and encouraged by the negative response and his pursuit of her began.

“She was the same Una-May, she didn’t look a day older,” he said.

The couple’s relationship blossomed over the year despite the distance as Alexander would call her three times per day. It was during one of these calls that he made a proposal — of sorts.

“During one of those calls I said to her ‘when we get married we are going to do such and such’. Her reply: ‘What? Are you crazy?'”

But he explained that he had been praying and asking God for a wife and the specifics of that wife, then he had started looking for her, as he felt she met those specifications and that she was the one the Lord had chosen.

“So when he was praying for me, having loved me for a long time, he knew I was the person God had picked out for him. So he had been praying and he had been looking for me,” she said.

On Saturday the couple tied the knot at the Eastwood Park New Testament Church of God as they began their lives together as husband and wife. It was his second time down the aisle.

It is, she said, the perfect time to start married life.

“As a teacher, whatever I do I do it thoroughly,” she explained. “I was totally involved with Red Cross as a volunteer; I was involved with church and with work, so my life was really very full. I have always been working.”

“I always said I must get my qualifications in the name of Dillon. And I wanted my career. Although there are couples who married very young and their husbands or wives aided them to finish school I didn’t think like that. I thought that I should finish my schooling and everything then think about marriage. And then to be honest, after college I just got into my work.”

Now love has come at the right time.

Dillon had retired as principal of Shortwood Practising School where she served for 30 years, and was planning on enjoying herself when Alexander came along and changed her plans.

“I had decided I had a very full life so I said I was going on a cruise. I was going to the Olympics and I was going to enjoy myself,” she explained.

Now she won’t be doing these things alone.