A correspondent writes:
JOHN ECKERSLEY was one of those people who did not just “talk the talk”; he also “walked the walk”.
John was born in Liverpool during the war, while his father was with the British forces in North Africa and his mother was staying with other family members. John was four when he first met his dad at the end of the war, and, even after the arrival of his sister, Maureen, the little family had to continue living in the overcrowded house for some time until they could manage to move into another small dwelling (which later was condemned and demolished as a slum). The eventual acquisition of a council house with a bathroom when John was ten seemed like unimaginable luxury.
John passed his 11-plus and went to Waterloo Grammar School, Liverpool, where he eventually became School Captain. He also went to Christchurch, Waterloo, and joined the Scouting movement there, which enabled him to go on the summer camps and gain a great love of the hills. It was during these teenage years that he was forcibly struck by a Christian Aid poster depicting the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt with the word “inasmuch”. This was to be John’s theology through the rest of his life.
After university and a PGCE from Loughborough College, John discovered his vocation to teach. He first offered himself to VSO and was sent to the Sudan to teach English as a foreign language. He received a warm welcome. On his return “to find a wife”, John taught in north Manchester and indeed did “find a wife” at his local church, St Margaret’s, Prestwich. He married Nancy in that church in 1972, and the couple offered themselves to the organisation Christians Abroad, and were sent to Jamaica (a suitcase apiece) to teach — John, geography, and Nancy, biology — for two years. It was here, in 1974, that John became a Reader in the Province of the West Indies.
On their return to the UK, the couple settled in York and went to St Mark’s, where John began to lead family services and their four children began to arrive in fairly rapid succession. John continued to teach geography, this time at St Aidan’s High School, Harrogate. At St Aidan’s, he also worked as a lay chaplain, inspiring (through his somewhat wacky assemblies and fund-raising activities) his students in practical Christianity, earning himself the staff nickname of “Johnny Carport”.
After his retirement from school-teaching, he continued following his calling as a teacher and fund-raiser by heading summer-club activities for primary-school children and continuing to take primary-school assemblies in Heslington, York, where Nancy was Vicar. After she retired from stipendiary ministry, John served as an official Christian Aid volunteer in Flamborough, Bempton, Kilham, and Scarborough.
He is best known in other churches in the country for his fund-raising activities for Christian Aid and for his writing of walking books and his long walks. John and Nancy together raised around £200,000 for Christian Aid through their sponsored walks and John’s books and they walked about 33,000 miles (according to their grandson) during the process. The first long walk was a five-month-long Land’s End to John o’Groats (by a very indirect route covering 1400 miles). This was followed by Carlisle to Bridlington, Dover to Carlisle, Dundee to Inverness (the long way around the coast), and Filey to York Minster. On these walks, they visited, spoke and prayed in churches, cathedrals, and abbeys.
John died peacefully on 4 January, at home, in Flamborough, in the company of Nancy and his daughter, Tanya. He leaves Nancy, four children, and nine grandchildren, and, never one to be interested in material possessions, the one suit that he ever owned in his life, some well-worn jumpers, and “good wood” rescued from skips.
