Phyllis and Werner Rang – their jewellery business is for sale after more than 40 years. (0580595)

ONE of Sark’s best-known businesses is on the market. Phyllis and Werner Rang, who have run Rang Jewellers in The Avenue for more than 40 years, have finally decided to retire and the business is to be sold.

Mr and Mrs Rang made the decision towards the end of last year and this week decided that the business they started in 1968 will be advertised in both Sark and Guernsey.

Mr Rang told me that they will obviously miss it but added (with a smile) that they were not getting any younger – he will be 89 next month.

The couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary in May last year – almost exactly 12 months after the book telling their quite extraordinary love story was published on Liberation Day.

They met during the German Occupation of Sark when Werner was a young medical orderly in the German army and he accompanied the German doctor on his visits to the civilian population – necessary because Sark’s own medical officer had left the island just before the occupying forces arrived.

On one of those occasions Phyllis, then a teenage Miss Baker, was ill with tonsillitis and, as he recalled many times since, the young soldier decided there and then that he would look no further for a wife.

At the end of the Occupation, Werner was taken to the United Kingdom as a prisoner of war and it was there, on his release, that they were married.

They returned to Sark after their marriage and both later became members of Chief Pleas – firstly as deputies and later with Mrs Rang sitting as a tenant and Mr Rang as a substitute for a tenant not able to attend.

They fulfilled those roles until the historic elections of last December.

Mr Rang also served as Sark Constable and for many years as the driver of the island’s tractor-drawn ambulance.

For services to the community he was awarded the British Empire Medal.

Their jewellery shop was rarely empty, particularly during the summer months when visitors, many of whom had become friends over the years, called in – sometimes to make a purchase but more often than not simply to catch up on what was going on in Sark.

In recent times, and particularly when it became clear that the island was going to have to elect all members of Chief Pleas, newspaper and television journalists from all over the globe would be seen interviewing Mrs Rang and, without putting too fine a point on it, getting the benefit of her often strident views on matters political as they affected her island home.

In the autumn of last year, to their surprise and delight, they received a lifetime achievement award from the Sark Chamber of Commerce.

I know from personal experience that many people – both residents and visitors – are going to miss those enjoyable occasions in the back room of their shop – occasions which were as often great fun as they were serious, and particularly so when they recalled their life together.

There cannot be anyone who does not wish this delightful couple a very happy retirement.

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