John Laws farewells wife Caroline at funeral in Sydney
Radio veteran John Laws was supported by a host of famous faces including Russell Crowe as he farewelled his ‘Princess’ at her funeral in Sydney today, sharing with mourners the moment she told him she loved him for the first time.
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Radio legend John Laws shared the moment his beloved Princess told him she loved him for the first time with mourners at her funeral in Sydney today.
Caroline Laws died aged 82 after a battle with cancer at the Woolloomooloo wharf home she shared with the husband she first met when they were teenagers almost 70 years ago.
In the order of service for her funeral at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point Laws, 84, recalled the moment love struck.
“I remember on one occasion when we were walking in my Uncle George’s beautiful garden Caroline was just 14 and I was 15,” he wrote.
“We were holding hands and she just stopped walking … and said to me, ‘I think we love each other’ … just like that. And we did … and did …”
The couple’s close friend and neighbour, actor Russell Crowe, told mourners including former prime minister Paul Keating how he would see them still walking hand-in-hand along the Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf.
“The stroll got slower but the love only ever got deeper,” he said. “They were and they remain a beautiful, inspiring love story.”
That would come as no surprise to the Golden Tonsils’ listeners who knew her as the Princess through his popular talkback show on 2UE and later on his morning show on 2SM.
Nor to the mourners gathered to remember her on an overcast Tuesday morning including fellow radio hosts Alan Jones and Ben Fordham, TV presenters Brian Henderson and Kerri-Anne Kennerley and singer John Williamson.
Although the couple had met as teenagers they were parted for 20 years while Caroline moved to London for ballet and married another man. Appropriately enough they were reunited in the Tunnel of Love at Luna Park.
By the time they married in 1976 it was her second and his third marriage and they had nine children, which they raised together as a family.
Mr Crowe said Caroline had always been supportive and welcoming.
“When my first son Charlie was born, Caroline would come and visit every now and again,” he said.
“She helped organise his first birthday party. Among the guests for the one-year-old birthday party was an ebullient and highly amused Kerry Packer.
“Every time I saw her she was always warm and affectionate. She told me more than once that she was very proud of me. It might sound trite to others, but it doesn’t matter who you are — some days, you really need to hear something like that,” he said.
Crowe tenderly adjusted Law’s tie when he arrived, stepping from a silver Rolls Royce. When Caroline died all Laws could bring himself to say was: “I am lost”.
As her coffin was carried from the church, Laws followed with tears streaming down his face.