“My parents, they are simply adorable”: Jocelyne Lavail, their daughter, takes a tender look at this extraordinary couple, who have just celebrated their seventy years of marriage this spring, in all simplicity. These children from the Loumet district of Pamiers attended the same school as teenagers without having noticed each other.
So it was a ball, in Bonnac, that turned their heads. Or rather, turn your eyes towards each other. “As teenagers – they were 13 and 14 years old – they attended the same school, in Loumet [un quartier de Pamiers, NDLR] but they hadn’t seen each other”, smiles their daughter Jocelyne, who looks fondly at her parents, Rosette and Louis Barthe, now aged 92 and 93, and who have just celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary. An extraordinary couple, it’s true. “Simply adorable”, sums up Jocelyne.
An Appamean life
Their journey resembles them, and also resembles the city where they spent their lives, “hand in hand, as always”, she adds. Rosette Barthe, née Séguier, is none other than the daughter of the managers of the cycle store on rue Lakanal, where the Appameans discovered the very first motorcycles. The store will be taken over by their granddaughter Jocelyne, and her husband, for a time, before the arrival of bicycles in supermarkets pushes them to change direction.
Rosette will be an accountant at La Tricoterie, this factory which will give its name to the small square located next to the Notre-Dame-du-Camp church. The factory, which notably manufactured socks, closed in 1958. The building was destroyed in 1975. For her part, Rosette Barthe continued her career as an accountant for the Castella high school, until retirement.
For his part, Louis spent his entire career at “the Factory”. He experienced the harsh constraints of 3/8, as a turner, throughout his career. “He has lost sleep. He always wakes up at 4 a.m.,” notes Jocelyne. The son of a farming couple from Villeneuve-du-Paréage, who also ran the town’s bar-grocery store, he was not afraid of working double shifts to help his own parents. A hard worker, he was also tough on evil: “At the factory, he lost a finger, which he left in a machine. He went to the hospital on foot, from the factory, with his injured hand. It was tough at that time,” confides Jocelyne Lavail.
Holidays by the sea
In this life devoted to work, the great happiness was obviously the holidays, and the holidays… by the sea. “My father made his first caravan himself. He finished painting it the day before departure. When we arrived at the sea, there was a mass of midges stuck by the paint,” she remembers with an amused laugh. Enough to nourish happy memories. Rosette and Louis never lost this passion for travel, which they continued to nourish for many years.
Both also surround their children with their love, Jocelyne and her brother Jean-Louis, unfortunately taken from the affection of his family five years ago, as well as their two grandchildren Cindy and Benoit, and their grandson Raphaël. “They have always gotten along well and loved each other like the first day. They knew how to get through the joys and sorrows of life by supporting each other, and by taking care of each other, it is the glue of their relationship,” concludes Jocelyne Lavail.
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