Correspondents write:
CANON Jeffry Smith, who died on 29 November, aged 66, was born in Inglewood, California, the son of schoolteachers. Anglican from his early days, Fr Jeffry was to have a life of ordained ministry, first in California, then mainly in England, but also in Bermuda, Scotland, and elsewhere.
A believer in parish ministry and neighbourliness, as well as a keen walker and traveller, he will be remembered for his warm laughter, his open heart to strangers, his readiness to go great distances in furtherance of the Gospel, and his love for life.
Fr Jeffry obtained a bachelor’s degree at Pitzer College, California, and a theological education at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, with an exchange year at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. He was ordained deacon in 1986 and priest in 1987, serving in the parish of St Paul’s, Visalia, in the diocese of San Joaquin, California.
His life and ministry might have proceeded mainly in the States, had Fr Jeffry not faced a bewildering dispute with a bishop who required that he shave off the handsome beard he had worn from the age of 17. No such demands were made by his spiritual kin in England, including the Bishop of Dorking, the Rt Revd David Wilcox. So life, ministry, and whiskers moved to the UK in 1987.
A fuller telling of this move would emphasise not the beard episode, but the inspiration that Fr Jeffry and his wife, Barbara, felt together in English parish life, first experienced during their Cuddesdon time. Britain was where they felt that they best belonged and wanted to raise their two girls.
After a curacy at St Francis’s, Frimley, Fr Jeffry became Rector of East and West Clandon, where the family spent especially formative years. The hospitality of the Clandon rectory is thus captured by his daughter Melissa, then 11 years old:
We live in a house called “The Rectory”
Across from the stone church directly.
So our phone never stops,
We’ve had earls, tramps and cops,
We’d be much better off ex-directory.
But ex-directory was not his style. Fr Jeffry, who prided himself on visiting every household in the Clandons, loved to meet people from different backgrounds, and to enjoy conversation, meals, and a tipple with old and new friends.
Throughout his ministry, he looked far beyond the parish, visiting and serving churches as far flung as Serbia and Malawi. More recently, he raised funds to build a school in Kenya. He also walked long distances; some favourite treks included the Pilgrim’s Way, the Camino de Santiago, and the route of the Black Madonna, Poland.
Once both daughters had flown the nest, Fr Jeffry and Barbara moved to Devon, where he worked in chaplaincy at HM Prison Channings Wood, a continuation of his commitment to prisoners which had begun in the Clandons at HM Prison Send. They then moved to Bermuda, where he was a residentiary canon of Holy Trinity Cathedral, for four years.
Back in the UK, Fr Jeffry joined the the Glendale Team Ministry in Newcastle diocese, where he was responsible for churches in Kirknewton, Doddington, Chatton, and Chillingham. In a final post before retirement, he crossed the River Tweed to serve both as Rector of St Mary and All Souls, in Coldstream, and interim priest of St Ebba’s, Eyemouth, in Edinburgh diocese. In his Borders years, he undertook to plant 1000 trees as an environmental investment for future generations. By the time his illness forced him to stop, he had planted 600; his family intend to complete his goal.
Recently retired in Wooler, Northumberland, he died in a hospice, where he was constantly tended in the final days by his daughters, Laura and Melissa, and cared for also by his wife Barbara, sons-in-law Eric and Paul, and five grandchildren.
During his final days, he expressed love for many and an acceptance of death with hope in the resurrection. Asked by one of his grandchildren to name the most beautiful place he had seen, he answered, “California . . . but not as it is: the idea of California.” Really, he was looking to paradise.