Former head of Northern Ireland civil service and his wife celebrate 60 years since their marriage in New York

Ken Bloomfield married Elizabeth in New York in 1960, when he was in America on secondment for three years from his job at Stormont.

Sir Ken and Lady Bloomfield, as they are now styled, marked their Diamond anniversary at home in Holywood yesterday.

The devoted couple, who have two grown up children, Caroline and Timothy, had dated ten times before their wedding on Park Avenue in Manhattan on September 7 1960.

Both of them grew up in Belfast and knew each other from playing tennis, before going to a dance together.

Ken said to Elizabeth (nee Ramsey) as he was leaving Belfast by ship to England, ahead of the crossing the Atlantic: “I think I am going to marry you.”

He laughed yesterday at the recollection of this confident statement. “It is very cheeky, isn’t it?”.

Elizabeth said she rushed home to tell her mother: “I am engaged!”

Her mother asked who to, and then what her response had been? “I said yes!”

Ken was standing in a white suit with flowers when she later landed in New York from the Queen Mary. She was aged 24 at the time and he 29.

They married in a Presbyterian church in Manhattan.

They did not know many people in the city so it was a small ceremony. “It was great!” laughs Sir Ken when reflecting on th fact that there were few guests.

It was fine warm weather the September day they wed.

The newlyweds loved their time in the United States and would have happily stayed there but Sir Ken was called back to be secretary to the then NI prime minister Terence O’Neill’s cabinet. Later he was was secretary to the Sunningdale power sharing executive. After that failed, and direct rule had been introduced from London, he was made head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in 1984.

Sir Ken says he worked over a time of “immense change” in Northern Ireland. He was, he says, lucky to enjoy his job.

Lady Bloomfield was involved with charities, above all the Salvation Army.

The couple recall a difficult time in the 1980s when the IRA bombed their Crawfordsburn home. “It was not very jolly really,” Sir Ken says.

“I would not want to go through it again,” he continues with a laugh, then adds, seriously: “We were very lucky”

Their daughter’s bedroom was the only room that was destroyed in the attack, but she had returned to university the day before.

“That was God’s wisdom, so to speak,” reflects Sir Ken.

“We have had sixty very happy years of married life. I have no regret at all,” he says,

Then, looking at her and laughing, he adds: “I hope you haven’t either?”

“Oh no!” says Lady Bloomfield.

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