Lifelong pal makes Atlantic crossing for 90th birthday celebrations

THE Atlantic Ocean has failed to keep two friends apart who met on the back streets of a North-East town more than 80 years ago.

Marjorie Cooper celebrates her 90th birthday today with best friend Betty Goodman beside her.

Mrs Goodman, also aged 90, has travelled 3,000 miles from her home in Ottawa, Canada, to join her friend for the special day.

The pair have stayed in contact throughout their long lives after becoming friends as young children living in Darlington .

Mrs Cooper, nee Alderson, said: "We used to play together in the back roads when we were three-years-old.

"I lived at 242 Haughton Road and Betty lived at 232, although it used to be called Gibson Road then."

The girls both attended Gurney Pease Primary School and would visit Haughton Road Chapel three times a week together.

As they grew older, the friends would attend dances at the town's Palais and Co-Op dance halls.

Mrs Cooper, from Gilling Crescent, Darlington, added: "We also used to go along Grange Road to the park looking for boys."

Both women met their husbands during the Second World War.

Mrs Goodman, nee Barker, married Canadian airman Edward Goodman, while Mrs Cooper married a soldier, Tom Cooper, from Rugby.

The women were both married at St James the Great Church, Darlington, each acting as bridesmaid for the other.

After the war, Mrs Goodman went with her husband to France, before settling in Canada where she worked as a clerk for the Government.

She had two sons and now has two grandsons.

Mrs Cooper remained in Darlington, where she trained as a baker.

She had four sons and now has eight grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.

Throughout their lives, the women have stayed in touch, writing letters and speaking regularly on the phone.

Mrs Cooper travelled to see her friend in Franca and Canada, while Mrs Goodman regularly flew back to Darlington.

"I love Canada but England is my home," said Mrs Goodman.

However, despite their long-running friendship, the women do not always see eye-to-eye.

When she visits Darlington, Mrs Goodman loves to sit on the pedestrianised High Row and watch the world go by, but her friend is not impressed with the changes to the town centre.

Mrs Cooper also claims Darlington now appears "dead".

But Mrs Goodman disagrees, adding: "I haven't been into one shop yet and not had to queue.

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Nine years later came another, more spectacular, sentimental, and seemingly final end to British world rule: the colossal funeral procession for Winston Churchill. The nation came out and came together en masse to mourn the passing of the man who had personified a passing era, the last link to their World War triumphs, a last public figure with roots in the Victorian 19th century. As of Churchill’s death in 1965, the Club’s most famous event, The Lawn Tennis Championships (otherwise known as Wimbledon) was still run by the old laws of amateurism that had held sway throughout England into the early years of the 20th century. Until 1911, the prime minister and members of the House of Commons worked without pay, and the House of Lords had a real say in the government. Tennis players weren't so lucky; in 1913, the ILTF (now the ITF) was formed in part to make sure that its biggest events, the major national championships and the Davis Cup, remained amateur-only.  Somehow, against all the economic laws of the 20th century, they kept their lawns free from the taint of money for five more decades, and tennis remained sealed off from the American-led professional sports revolution. Even as political, economic, and military power had moved from London to the U.S., the All England Club continued to set the standards for international tennis. When Wimbledon unilaterally allowed professionals to play, the rest of the ILTF and the tennis world fell in line. Wimbledon was always a kind of last bastion for traditionalists, a refuge for dying values. In 1923, a year after the All England Club moved from Worple Road to its current site on Church Road, a former Viceroy of India, George Curzon, gave the club a signboard with Kipling’s legendary couplet celebrating the stiff upper lip, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” Curzon and Kipling were friends and fellow old-school Victorians who feared the old amateur public school values were dying out in the new century. But the last bastion of the 19th century couldn’t survive that year of mass upheaval, 1968. Two years earlier the country had watched its soccer team, made up of professionals, win the World Cup; tennis’s amateur system looked pretty creaky by comparison. But it was a U.S. invasion that finally toppled the ancient kingdom (or, as Bud Collins refers to amateur tennis, the Lost Civilization). In 1967, two American promoters signed virtually all of the top remaining amateur players, including the champ at Wimbledon and Forest Hills, John Newcombe, to professional contracts, making them ineligible for the majors. The pro sports wave had finally rolled over the club walls and swamped the lawns. When Wimbledon went pro in 1968, and began a relationship with Cleveland-based talent agency IMG that same year, the war was over: Jurisdiction over tennis had passed to the American Empire.

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