CANON Jeffry Smith, who died on 29 November, aged 66, was born in Inglewood, California, son of a schoolteacher and a minor-league baseball player turned schoolteacher. Anglican from his early days, Fr Jeffry’s life grew into one of ordained ministry first in California, then mainly in England, but also in Bermuda, Scotland, and elsewhere.

Recently retired in Wooler, Northumberland, he faced a fight against renal cancer through much of 2022, and he died in 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, Thomas, Naomi, Anna-Maria, Lydia and Ezra.

A believer in Christian parish ministry and neighbourliness, as well as a keen walker and traveller, he will be remembered for his warm laughter, his geniality in community and liturgical practice, his open heart to strangers, his readiness to go great distances in furtherance of the Gospel, his lightness in all he did, and his love for life.

From his youth, he loved adventure and had a knack for chancing upon it. As a child, he terrified his mother by riding in her car with a rattlesnake he had captured in a shoebox. As a teenager supporting America’s civil rights movement and opposing the Vietnam war, he went to see Robert F. Kennedy speak, only to find himself at the scene of his assassination. In early adulthood he wandered vast North America, working odd jobs. One summer, he tested electrical heaters in a metal building under the desert sun; another year he worked dynamiting for oil in the Canadian Maritimes. Once, diving into a remote lake, he came face to face with an underwater moose.

Fr Jeffry worked from a young age, paying his own way through university while supporting a growing family. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in History and Economics 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 United States had Fr Jeffry not, to hear him tell the tale, faced an early and bewildering dispute with a bishop who strictly demanded 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 in the Diocese of Guildford, Rt Revd David Wilcox. So life, ministry, and whiskers moved to the UK in 1987, and thereafter Fr Jeffry’s family of four naturalised as British subjects.

A fuller telling of this move would emphasise not the beard episode but the inspiration Fr Jeffry and Barbara felt together in English parish life, first experienced during their Cuddesdon time, a period during which their younger daughter was born. This drew them to England, where they felt they best belonged and wanted to raise their girls. This was the truth beneath Fr Jeffry’s frequent joke that he had chosen the UK over California for its superior weather.

After a curacy at St Francis Church in Frimley, Surrey, Fr Jeffry became Rector of nearby East and West Clandon, where his family spent especially formative years. He prided himself on visiting every household in the villages. The hospitality of the Clandon rectory and the breadth of his parish ministry is captured by a limerick penned 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 loved to meet people from different backgrounds and develop treasured friendships. He talked enthusiastically of conversations shared, meals eaten and tipple drunk with old and new friends. For Fr Jeffry, a small errand in town often stretched into long hours, as he savoured chats with the people along the way.

Throughout his ministry, he looked far beyond the parish. He and Barbara visited and served at the Diocese in Europe’s chaplaincy of St Mary the Virgin in Belgrade, Serbia. Invited by a clergy friend from Malawi, he travelled there for a month of teaching and preaching. More recently he raised funds to build a school in Kenya.

He often walked long distances; some favourite treks including the Pilgrim's Way from Winchester to Canterbury, the path up to Yeavering Bell above Kirknewton, Northumberland, the Camino from Porto, Portugal, to Santiago de Campostela, Spain, and the route to the Black Madonna icon of Czestochowa, Poland. He would also go great lengths to satisfy a craving for his most-loved foods, driving miles out of the way for a particular balti, taco, Italian deli item or Greek salad. However far he travelled, his love of baseball and undying fascination with US politics always remained as a reminder of his origins.

Once both daughters had flown the nest, in 2003, Fr Jeffry and Barbara moved to Devon, where he worked in chaplaincy at HMP Channings Wood, a continuation of his commitment to prisoners that had begun during his time in the Clandons at HMP Send. They then moved onward to Bermuda, which had long intrigued him since seeing it featured in a National Geographic article. There he became Canon Residentiary at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, serving four years.

When they returned to the UK, it was to Northumberland, where Fr Jeffry, long a lover of the beautiful coasts and hills around Holy Island, wished to finish his labours and ultimately retire in the shadow of the Cheviot. He joined the Diocese of Newcastle’s team ministry for the Glendale Group of eight rural parishes, where he held special responsibility for St Gregory the Great, Kirknewton, St Mary and St Michael, Doddington, Holy Cross Church, Chatton, and St Peter’s, Chillingham. In a final position before retirement, Fr Jeffry crossed the River Tweed to serve as Rector of St Mary and All Souls in Coldstream and interim priest of St Ebba’s, Eyemouth, in the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Edinburgh.

He made fast friends in his Borders years, in and out of parish life. Among these were the smallholding farmers in the Glendale valley on whose land he undertook to plant 1,000 trees as an environmental investment for future generations. By the time his illness forced him to stop, he had planted 600 trees; his surviving family intend to complete his goal.

During his final days of infirmity, which were such a change of pace compared to the rest of his active life, 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 in all his years, he answered, “California… but not as it is: the idea of California.” Really, he was looking to Paradise.