Britain’s oldest man ‘only ever wanted to make a difference’

Reg Dean, a former 
minister, died on Saturday in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, at 
the Waltham House assisted living apartment where he 
had lived for the past seven 
years.

His son Christopher Dean 
said his father had only ever wanted “to make a difference” to the lives of people less fortunate than himself.

Mr Dean was heavily involved in charity work throughout his life and completed a sponsored walk from Nottingham to Derby at the age of 90.

His son said his father had told him he had no fear at the prospect of his death.

“He told me he wasn’t at all scared,” he said. “He said to me once ‘I am living under a sentence of death – but I intend to take a long time about it’.”

Born in the Potteries on November 4, 1902, Mr Dean served as an Army chaplain in Burma in the Far East in the Second World War, telling his son he remembered at one point being surrounded by the Japanese and taunted by them.

“They were saying ‘Johnny – we will come and kill you tomorrow’ and so he spent the evening in prayer. The next morning the Japanese had disappeared, they never knew where to.”

A man of God, he was a minister with both the Church of England and the United Reformed Church and also worked as a teacher in Belper in Derbyshire.

Mr Dean said faith had been a key part of his father’s life, and one of the principles he had always credited with his long life – although he always believed an “elixir” given to him in India may have played a hand in his longevity, when he was told he would suffer no illness until he was 100.

The world’s oldest living man is Jiroemon Kimura, from Kyotango in Japan, who is 115 years.