John and Carolyn Bailey
Profile
It amazes me how far people are willing to travel to our services on Sundays: from places as distant as Banbury, Aylesbury, and Reading, for example. John and Carolyn Bailey have been driving the 23 miles from Henley-on-Thames since 1998 – at first very occasionally, but with increasing frequency since John (formerly a member of the Church of England) decided about two years ago "I really had to say that I was a Unitarian". Carolyn is still an Anglican, but is happy to accompany him to our chapel a couple of times a month – when the fixtures of Henley Town Football Club permit, for John is the football correspondent of the Henley Standard (a post he has held since 1955!) and – in addition to his mid-week reports – is obliged to produce 1000 words each weekend, whether the local team is playing at home or away on Saturdays.
John was born in Henley (in 1939), educated there (at Henley Grammar School), and has never lived anywhere else, commuting to London every day to his job at the offices of the Church Commissioners in Westminster until he took early retirement in 1993. For the Commissioners he dealt with such obscure matters as tithe redemption annuities (don’t ask!) and also with the conveyancing of properties held for investment. In retirement he is able to give free rein to his interests in local history and sports history: he writes articles on his researches for various sports history magazines and for the Henley Archaeological and Historical Group, and has published books on the history of Association Football in the Thames Valley in the early 1870s, and on football in England during the first world war. Besides football, he has a deep interest in cricket (and shares with our former Minister a hopeless loyalty to Derbyshire County Cricket Club).
John had attended Holy Trinity Church in Henley from the age of 4, served on the Parochial Church Council in the 1960s, and sang in the choir of St Mary’s Church for about 20 years. So why did he decide to become a Unitarian? He describes himself as "never a typical Anglican": as a young man he had been influenced by Victor Gollancz’s book A New Year of Grace, imbued as it was with Unitarian-type ideas, and increasingly he found himself searching for a more liberal faith. Although he retains an affection for the C. of E. and loves its choral tradition and the beautiful liturgies of Evensong and Matins, he needed to give freer expression to his intuitive faith in what he describes (quoting the Unitarian hymn-writer Seth Curtis Beach) as the "Mysterious Presence, Source of All". He was attracted also to the congregational governance of our denomination, and feels comfortable with what he describes as the "conservative liberalism" of the services in the MCO chapel.
Carolyn’s membership of the Anglican Church stems back to her Episcopalian up-bringing on Long Island, USA, where she was born (of Czech-Bohemian stock) in 1943. After graduating from a liberal arts college in New York City, she worked in several places, including a radio station, before joining the staff of the United Nations in New York as a secretary and later transferring to the UN offices in Geneva for three years in the late 1960s. It was in 1972 that she came to England on an exchange scheme and ended up working for the Church Commissioners – where she met John. They were married in 1973. For most of her married life she worked in Henley as a legal secretary. She loves the riverside setting of Henley, and its small-town atmosphere.
In retirement, Carolyn’s greatest joy is in her membership of several local choral societies. She is an alto, singing everything from Tudor to modern works; but her tastes range beyond classical music and, like John, she likes jazz too. They both collect books and enjoy rummaging in second-hand bookshops. She spends a lot of time doing fine needlework (especially cross-stitch, but also other types such as ‘black work’ and ‘Hardanger work’). Their approaches to retirement differ: John says it’s important to have a semi-structured week and to plan ahead, while Carolyn claims to be much more disorganised. In this respect, as in their religious lives, their differences seem to complement each other very well. Catherine Robinson March 2004