Richard Dingley
I began life in the industrial midlands where my grandfather
had opened a doctor’s surgery in industrial Wednesbury during the 1880s. My father joined him after service in the
RAMC during the Great War. It was an
active Methodist household and I was brought up to go to church and Sunday
School every Sunday as well as daily prayer and Bible stories at home. With the start of the war in 1939 I was sent
to a Quaker prep school in Colwall; an idyllic place where we received, in a
loving environment, a broad education including classes in violin, pottery and
carpentry, and being encouraged to build tree houses, drive steam railway
engines and all the things now banned by Health & Safety!
It was while I was at Uppingham that I made the decision to
follow my family in both their Christian and medical paths. I started on my
preaching career aged 17, speaking in small village chapels in Shropshire where,
in 1947, we had moved. In my last term at school I was told by a family friend
that my father had less than a year to live. As he wanted to see me started on
the way to becoming a doctor, I decided to go straight to King’s College and
thence to KCH on Denmark Hill.
University deepened my faith and I was involved in the Christian Union
and church life. I came to the conclusion that if all people are equal in God’s
sight then they deserved an equal level of care. The question therefore was not
should one wait for a call to go overseas but rather that a specific call not
to go was needed!
I qualified in March 1955, two months before my degree
exam. You received your results on the
day of the last exam and I went straight to St. Luke’s chapel in Westminster
Abbey and committed my career to God’s care; to go when and where he sent
me. He has always been faithful to that
commitment. Because of the needs of eye
care in most developing countries I applied for that job first – and everything
else has followed. At KCH I had a lot
to do with the C.U. and we had a daily prayer meeting in the mortuary chapel!
We also organised the weekly ward services and ran a weekly bus to Harringay
during the Billy Graham Crusade where I sang in the choir.
National Service saw me in the RAF and getting posted to
Singapore and it was here that my interest in the Far East was developed. Trips to Sabah and Sarawak both resulted in
offers of employment but on return to England I was offered a year in Jerusalem
at the St. John’s Eye Hospital.
While Sylvia was in the same C.U. at K.C.H. we were not
interested in each other but met up again in Singapore and in 1960 decided that
we were meant for each other! We were married 10 days after my return to
England in London.
While in Jerusalem I applied to join the Colonial Service
and we went to North Borneo in 1962.
There was no Methodist Church there so before we left Jerusalem I was
confirmed in St. Georges’ Collegiate Church by Archbishop MacInnis. On arrival
in Jesselton I was invited by Nigel Cornwall, Bishop of Borneo to be a
Reader! A great complement to
Methodism!
As a Civil Servant I was not affected by the removal of all
Christian missionaries and was thus able assist by looking after Christchurch
as well as continuing to conduct services in some of the rural churches. We
were also asked to start Scripture Union in Sabah and be involved in many
welfare organisations, especially St. John Ambulance, the Blind Society and
Rotary.
We came to Draycott on
retirement in 1986 to be near Sylvia’s mother. Since returning I have worked
for short periods in The Gambia, The Solomon Islands and Bangladesh as well as
returning to Malaysia to teach Laser Refractive Surgery.
Our children are now
scattered, Lois working in Nepal as Disability and Rehab Advisor in the
mid-west of the country, John with the UNDP in Lao as Chief Technical Advisor
to the unexploded ordinance programme while Hannah lives with her family in the
south of France