After a 15 month illness my wife Anthea died peacefully in a hospice early on Friday morning. She was a wonderful woman and it was my privilege to be married to her for more than 50 years. She was a loving and faithful wife and later a superb mother and grandmother. Her parents were both musicians and met during the Pentecostal revival brought by the George Jeffreys crusades in the 1930s. This was a wartime marriage, which, sadly, did not last. Her father left the family, and they were plunged into breadline poverty. Anthea did well at school, but wanted to leave as soon as she could so as to help her mother with family finances, but, miraculously, she was able to stay on and then enter teacher training. She had by then renewed her faith in Christ in a personal way, and thereafter for the rest of her life was faithful in prayer and daily Bible reading.

After qualifying, she could’ve worked in various counties but opted for Hampshire and was offered a council flat because there was a shortage of teachers in the expanding town of Basingstoke. Providentially, her flat was located was only a few doors away from mine and, when we attended the same Pentecostal congregation, love blossomed and we became engaged and married. The Lord blessed us with two wonderful sons, and she devoted herself to being a mother, but she also taught Sunday school and in several children’s holiday clubs, and in other ways served. Later when I became involved in the ministerial training for Assemblies of God, we moved north to the college at Mattersey. She started a group for the wives of trainee ministers and had for some time been writing lessons for Scripture Union. She was asked to take charge of the correspondence course run at Mattersey and did so with diligence and went the second mile with her students. She continue to serve in many different ways in the church, including as a deacon, and later sometimes cooking lunches for impoverished children. She gave to mission and missionaries as well as the local church. She always supported me in my calling and career, and saw it as her role to do so.

She loved her garden, knew every flower in it and enjoyed growing a profusion of fruit. She remembered everybody’s birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas presents. She was an excellent cook and delighted in making all kinds of interesting meals. She enjoyed singing and had an excellent auditory memory for symphonic pieces. She made friends and was consistently faithful to them reaching back even to primary school more than 70 years ago.

The trumpet has sounded and she has passed to the celestial city and the presence of Jesus Himself.