Canon Dan O’Connor writes:
AFTER an unfailingly constructive life, never more modestly lived, Geoffrey Wilson Cleaver’s death on 2 December, aged 84, will be received with regret throughout the Anglican Communion.
Born in Harpenden, Geoff was schooled at St John’s, Leatherhead, after which he read Classics as an exhibitioner at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before taking an education diploma at Bristol. Five years of teaching Classics in grammar schools across England ended when a climbing accident put him in hospital, and caused a rethink. In 1962, he moved to Nigeria, to teach Classics at a church school in Onitsha.
There he met Nora Marsden, who was teaching ten miles away in Ogidi; they were married in 1968. They relocated, owing to the civil war in Nigeria, to the Gambia, where they taught until 1973.
His lifelong commitment to education included a return to Britain and teaching appointments at Hockerill College of Education, until its closure, and then from 1979 at USPG’s College of the Ascension, Selly Oak.
Geoff’s ten years there were hugely influential. The college, founded to train British missionaries for work overseas, was developing a new remit, providing training and educational opportunities for mid-career lay and clerical women and men from the churches of Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.
While Nora was a tutor and librarian, Geoff essentially master-minded this new bursaries programme. He planned and negotiated individual courses, often with placements in parishes which were as important for the parish as for the bursar. He was watchful of the welfare of what amounted to a sizeable element of the future leadership of partner Churches in the Anglican Communion. The respect and affection of the bursars for Geoff in this crucial position was constantly evident.
After two years as a USPG area secretary, Geoff, with Nora, retired in 1992. They were living at Halton, near Lancaster, and undertook valued voluntary work with both the Abbeyfield movement and the North Lancashire Counselling Service. The later work continued until his eyesight failed; and Nora’s caring was expanded.
Although shy and undemonstrative, Geoff had a penetrating mind, most attractively evident in wonderful, theologically profound animal stories and sermons. Behind a sometimes troubled exterior, he had a sweet and deeply caring nature.