The Bishop of Dover writes:
WHICH priest do you know starts a funeral service without the body arriving at the church, saying, “When she gets here, she can join us?” Or, when he had his cow stolen, made it known in the local community that by a certain time he would be tolling the bell for the person responsible, only to have the cow returned within the given timeframe? These two examples sum up the man that is being remembered. A “peculiar” (unique), “one of a kind”, “compassionate”, “a builder of men”, “a deep thinker”, helping many to see the divine in their everyday walk of life, and enabling many to meet God in a simple and unsophisticated way.
The Revd Anthony Ottey, known to his close friends and family as Tony, described his calling to ministry as beginning while he was attending St George’s, Savannah-la-Mar, in the west of the Island of Jamaica, when he was eight years old. At 19 years of age, he sailed for England, where he trained as an evangelist at the Church Army College in south London. He enjoyed the Sunday-afternoon stints at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.
At the time, there was an advertising campaign, “Guinness is good for you.” Tony often used as his theme “God is good for you.” He said that it was there that he learned to preach, to hold people’s attention, and to make them laugh. He loved a good joke — the ruder and more inappropriate, the better.
He returned to Jamaica in 1965 to work as a Church Army Captain in Clarendon, with the Revd Rob Nind, who was the Rector. With his Rector’s help, he later returned to England in 1969, to study at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and it was from here that he went on to be ordained in Southwark Cathedral on 2 July 1972. By then, Rob Nind was the Rector of St Matthew’s, Brixton, where Tony served his title.
Tony became more involved with the community and, on completing his curacy, was seconded to Lambeth Community Relations to become manager of the Gresham Project. Under his management, the project expanded and became the Abeng Centre, incorporating many other projects such as, Afiwe School, the first supplementary (Saturday) school for children of Caribbean origin. There were summer projects and holidays in the country, which took the children out of the urban environment to experience something new.
In Brixton, Tony saw the nightly music life with its heavy sound systems as a distraction from the goal of self-improvement. This did not prevent them, though, from inputting musical classes in various instruments. Visual arts included illustration, batik, photography, and sculpture.
The Abeng hosted a daily drop-in centre for the unemployed, unattached youth. This included a weekly evening of work experience, careers, and further education led by Patricia Harris, a careers adviser working for the Inner London Education Authority, who would later become his wife and life-long companion.
There was a mentoring programme for young men which resulted in the first group of professionally qualified young men of Caribbean background in Britain, mainly in teaching, youth and social work, and urban development. The best-known member of that group is the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.
From 1980 until 1984, he served as Race Relations Adviser to Southwark diocese, and, during that period, he initiated the founding of the Association of Black Clergy in Britain, an ecumenical organisation.
In 1983, he married Patricia Harris, and, in 1984, the family migrated to Jamaica, where he became the Rector of the Montpelier Cure. The couple’s union produced three children, Sarah, Hannah, and Stephen. Acheem joined the family when he was nine years old.
During his time at Montpelier, Tony built a church hall in Chichester and a sanctuary and church hall in Chester Castle, and started building a church in Cambridge. He dug the foundations of St Mary’s Preparatory School and ensured that there was a local school affordable for the community. He was always encouraging others to engage with his building projects, each church member being asked to commit a bag of cement and free labour. Tony was always present in his clerical shirt and water boots, with a spade or fork in his hand.
Tony was much loved, and lived what it meant to serve the rural community. He was available to them for spiritual guidance, but would also be ready to give them a ride to the hospital, offer them a place to stay for a while until they were back on their feet, or feed those who were hungry. Tony was really a modern-day prophet who was not afraid to call out injustices and speak up for those most vulnerable. There was nowhere that he would not go and talk about Jesus, and it would not be unusual to find him in the rum bar, clerically attired with cigarette in hand, engaging those around him.
Fr Tony was a mentor to those without direction. And, for those who lost their way in life, his outstretched arms were a guiding light to something greater. He carried his own burdens, but willingly carried others’ burdens, too. He owned nothing except his books and his clothing.
Fr Tony, rector, husband, father, brother, and friend, may your soul rest in peace and rise in glory.
The Revd Anthony Ottey died on 5 July, aged 80.
