SI MONTHLY NEWS JUNE 2005 Obituaries
From SI Exco News
Reverend Denys Whitehead is dead.
Reverend Denys Whitehead is dead. He passed
away at the age of 82, after a long and active life as
a priest of the Anglican Church, first in England and
from 1960 in Zambia. He retired in 1989 after 10
years as priest in charge, Livingstone, and settled in
the same town. Denys was born and raised in UK.
In the 50s he hitchhiked around in Europe, before
he emigrated, travelling overland to Zambia.
Denys married Margaret, who had a degree in physics from the university of Harare (in Zimbabwe). Denys joked, saying that the reason he married Margaret was that she was unbelievably practical, which was true as Margaret mended any technical problem from cars to washing machines.
Denys took the consequence of leaving his family in UK and brought his mother to Zambia, where she lived with them until she died at the age of 89.
Denys and Margaret had 4 children and 7 grandchildren. They enjoyed the pleasure of having 6 of their grandchildren going to schools near to them. But Denys and Margaret also suffered the pain of losing their firstborn - Peter.
September 8th. 1984 at 7,45 a.m., I rang on their doorbell as their first Servas visitor. I came without any prior notice (as I had just been given the address from the Zambian Servas Secretary). Despite coming unexpectedly I was invited to stay - as so many before and after me. Denys' and Margaret's involvement in all sort of local activities, their hospitality and compassion for their fellow man and fellow woman reflected the core of Christianity - love. I stayed with Denys and Margaret for 2 days, and Denys showed us the photos of his trip around Denmark in the fifties.
In 1993 they found themselves the only Servas Hosts left in Zambia, so they became National Secretary and recruited lots more Hosts. Over the years they have had more than 100 Servas Travellers in their house. In 2000 Denys retired as National Secretary. But in 2003 Servas International asked him to take up the post as Anglophone Africa Co-ordinator. Denys and Margaret attended the Servas General Assembly in Barcelona in 2004.
Towards the end of his life Denys suffered from a severe hearing loss, and had problems with his heart and with walking. But his eyesight and his intellectual capacities remained fit to the end of his life. Denys is dead now, and we have lost a fiery soul. But surely Margaret will carry on their work for the community and Denys' spirit.
Steen Carlsen, Denmark
Peter, dear friend
Friday Feb 25 in the night a dear friend, Peter Benenson, an English barrister whose outrage over the imprisonment of two students prompted him to found the human rights organization Amnesty International 43 years ago, died of pneumonia in Oxford at John Radcliffe Hospital. He was 83. Peter Benenson was not only the founder of Amnesty International, but a great friend of Servas too.
He discovered our association in Italy, where he frequently came. He was several times our guest in our home in Novara, a city not far from his beloved little lake, Lago d'Orta, where Peter rented for many years a little apartment. He became Servas host too in his countryhouse near London and participated in the Servas International Conference in Rome in May '86.
'Peter Benenson's life was a courageous testament to his visionary commitment to fight injustice around the world. He brought light into the darkness of prisons, the horror of torture chambers and tragedy of death camps around the world,' Irene Kahn, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in a statement. `This was a man whose conscience shone in a cruel and terrifying world, who believed in the power of ordinary people to bring about extraordinary change.' Khan added. "In 1961 his vision gave birth to human rights activism. In 2005, his legacy is a worldwide movement for human rights which will never die."
In the 1950s his human rights activism included efforts in fascist Spain, British-ruled Cyprus, communist Hungary and in South Africa. The one-year Appeal for Amnesty was launched on 28 May 1961, in an article called The Forgotten Prisoners in the British newspaper The Observer. That appeal attracted thousands of supporters and started a worldwide human rights movement. The catalyst for the original campaign was Benenson's sense of outrage after reading an article about the arrest and imprisonment of two students in a café in Lisbon, Portugal, who had drunk a toast to liberty.
In subsequent years, Benenson remained a modest, selfeffacing man, shunning attempts to glorify his role and avoiding personal publicity whenever possible. When the group won the Peace Prize (1977), the organization was represented by its chairman, Thomas Hammarberg of Sweden, not Benenson. "Once the concentration camps and the hellholes of the world were in darkness," Benenson said. "Now they are lit by the light of the Amnesty candle; the candle in barbed wire. When I first lit the Amnesty candle, I had in mind the old Chinese proverb: `Better light a candle than curse the darkness.'"
He wrote us his last Christmas Card two months ago: it will be his last dear memory. We thank Peter for all. He was really a great friend and we never will forget his smile, his voice, his availability, his intelligent simplicity, his warm humanity, his prophetic intuition, his great imagination.
Luigi Uslenghi, Servas Italy
