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Donald Membery
DONALD Membery, who has died aged 88, retired twice in his life but never stopped working.
It was his wish to be useful that brought him and his late wife, Gladys, to Yorkshire in 1988. When he retired from his parish in Oxfordshire, a friend with whom he had trained for the ordained ministry and who was then priest-in-charge of an inner-city parish in Leeds invited him to "come and help me", and he did.
For Father Membery it opened up another chapter in a remarkable life.
Born in Fulham, London, the son of a railway engineer, he was educated at Kings College, London, where he gained a BSc. He also trained as a teacher.
During the Second World War, he served as a navigator with the RAF following which he and Gladys, also a teacher, responded to a national call from the Universities Mission to Central Africa, and went as missionary teachers to Rhodesia and Lesotho, where they worked for 14 years.
They virtually built their own mission station at Umtali, and Fr Membery was very upset when, in recent years he heard that it had been burnt down during the troubles in what is now Zimbabwe.
His could turn his hand to anything – from making things to conference organising, all of which he put to good use at different times in his life. Talented at woodwork, in Africa – where if they needed anything they had to make it – he built all their furniture, and some was still in use in his Leeds home when he died.
On returning from Africa they lived firstly in Wiltshire, where he became a Church of England Lay Reader, and taught at Trowbridge Grammar School. He also retained his RAF links, being an ATC officer.
They later moved to Oxfordshire – and it was there that he decided to enter the ordained ministry. He was 60 when he was ordained priest in September 1980, serving as a non-stipendiary minister in the Oxford diocese.
In 1981 after retiring from his secular job with the Institute of Marketing, he was appointed priest-in-charge of a parish in Swyncombe, in Oxfordshire, until 1985.
A great raconteur, one of the stories he told with glee was that he was sent there with instructions to close it. He rebuilt the congregation, kept it open and, when it was linked with a neighbouring parish in 1985 he was made rector of the new benefice, serving until 1988 when he retired from parish ministry.
In Yorkshire, so many parishes and people benefited from his time, his experience and his exceptional pastoral care. He was firm, direct, orthodox in his beliefs and had a gift for always putting other people first.
He was always there to help parishes without priests. Indeed, he could be offended if he was not asked, so strongly did he believe that people needed priests. Many Yorkshire parishes, mostly in Leeds, called on him during interregnums only to find that not only did he take their services, but also used his other considerable talents. It was not unknown for him to turn up with his tool box and work almost unnoticed on some necessary repair while he and his wife, a talented sewer and embroiderer, would make vestments or altar cloths.
Following the Church of England's decision to allow women to be priests, in 1994 he became unofficial chaplain to Bishop John Gaisford, who was appointed Bishop of Beverley and the first Provincial Episcopal Visitor responsible for the care of parishes opposed to the move.
When the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, described opponents of women priests as heretics Fr Membery, already skilled in the use of computers and email when most people were still on typewriters, with typically dry, rebellious humour promptly changed his email address to heretic@demon.
He used his conference organising skills to put on the Northern Provincial Festivals begun by Bishop Gaisford and continued by his successor, Bishop Martyn Jarrett, whose project fund he also managed.
Fr Membery became more infirm in recent years, but with his indomitable spirit he never gave up. He fell in his home in the early hours of the Sunday before he died, but when a neighbour found him he insisted that he would be at church that morning to say Mass. The neighbour sent for the ambulance, and Fr Membery died on the following Thursday, January 15.
His Requiem Mass will take place on Tuesday at 7.30pm in
St Wilfrid's Church, Harehills, Leeds, where he had been honorary assistant priest for some years. Full details can be found at http://www.townfield.me.uk/dpm
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