A LOVE story spanning over 80 years and two continents, soon to be featured in an S4C documentary, has special interest for Tenby residents John and Val Denner.

For one of the six stories to be told in 'From Wales with Love - Letters from America' later this year, features John's beloved aunty, Florrie.

The tale, filmed by Cwmni Da, is a remarkable story of amazing coincidence, which has led John to the daughter of his aunty's childhood sweetheart who emigrated to America in 1920.

John and Val, who live in Gas Lane, originally hail from Deri, near Tredegar, where John was brought up by his aunty Florrie.

While running the village shop in 1993, John and Val were called upon by a Welsh-born woman who was visiting her homeland after years in America.

The lady explained that she had been asked by another lady, a Nancy Preston, who lived in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, to visit Deri to find a point of contact as her family had originally emigrated from the Rhymney Valley village decades before.

Mrs. Preston later wrote to John explaining what she knew of her father, Frank Saveker, who was one of the three generations of the Saveker family who had left Deri in 1920.

The name instantly rang a bell with John, who recalled that his late Aunty Florrie, who passed away in 1970, had once been courted by a Frank Saveker, who had gone to the United States.

He had more news for Nancy, too. When they had been clearing out Aunty Florrie's house after she passed away, they had found a box of love-letters, postcards and photographs which they still had stored at home.

These letters, tied with pink ribbon, were addressed to Florrie and were signed by Frank!

Nancy paid a visit to see John and Val and together they were able to piece together the remarkable tale.

Frank and Florrie had been childhood sweethearts and had attended the local school together, but their courtship had ended when 17-year-old Frank, his grandparents, parents and younger brother Arthur had left for America on board the SS Imperator on June 5, 1920.

The Savakers originally went to Colorado, before settling near Pittsburgh, which, like Deri, was a coal mining town.

Frank got a job as a tool designer with an electrical firm, but continued to write to Florrie, begging her to join him in the States.

Seven years after he first left, he wrote to Florrie to say that he had saved up enough money for them to marry, while Frank's mother also wrote pleading for her to join them.

But, for whatever reason, Florrie decided not to join Frank, and later married the son of a pub owner in Deri, with whom she shared 40 happy years.

"Our family goes back six generations in Deri," explained John. "She probably couldn't face cutting herself off from the family like that."

A year after Florrie married, Frank married an American girl, Helen Daugherty, and the couple settled in Helen's home town of Turtle Creek.

They had three children, the middle one being Nancy, and Frank passed away in 1955.

Nancy and her family, who now live in Woodford, Caroline County, have continued to keep in touch with John and Val, and they have visited each other on several occasions, talking for hours about their unusual connection.

It is this friendship and the remarkable love story that links them which will be told when 'From Wales with Love' airs in the autumn.