A Tribute to My Dad

Dad enjoyed watching cricket. We managed to get along to see Essex play a few times. The England test matches always gave him something to despair over - until we won the Ashes last year, but at least he could complain about the Channel 4 TV coverage.

He didn’t really play although he did have a willow bat and leather ball. When we played as a family - in the garden, on the beach or on picnics - he would always bowl underarm. In the meantime I ended up captaining the school team.

In preparation for a church cricket match some of us met for a practice behind Mill End Baptist Church. I was batting and someone asked Dad if he wanted to bowl. I told him he’s have to bowl overarm - never having seen him do so before. I was already in giggles before he bowled his first ball with a most peculiar action. I was still laughing when the ball went pass my bat and hit my stumps - clean bowled first ball! How embarrassing. Made even worse by the fact that the rest of Dad’s over he never got the ball within 4 feet of the stumps! There was more to Dad than met the eye!

Dad was born in 1927 to George and Daisy Egner. George’s father had come over from Germany in the 1860s and established a butchers shop in the East End of London . Dad was very interested in his German ancestry, and together we spent hours researching, tracing back to the early 16th Century in Wuerttemberg. Dad was quite tickled to discover a distant connection with people like Goethe, the writer and philosopher, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor who was executed for an alleged plot against Hitler.

Dad was the youngest of five children. His brother George was seven years older then him. Family life was a bit of a struggle making both ends meet, and debt caused them some problems. It led to Dad’s resolve to do better and to stay out of debt. He didn’t go to school much beyond the age of 12 and had no formal qualifications, which made what he did achieve all the more remarkable. The War came along, and Dad stayed in London during the bombing. When we’re feeling mischievous we tell people that he was in a Prisoner of War camp. Which he was! But it was in Scotland and after the War when he did National Service .

Through his brother, George, Dad came into contact with the Plymouth Brethren, and he came to put his trust in Jesus. This was to make a huge impact on his life. Through the Brethren he met Doreen Faulkes, who was working as a nanny. They fell in love and after a whirlwind romance were married in 1957. I came along nine months to the day afterwards. Dad always said it was a good job I wasn’t born early as that would have set tongues wagging! Janice, Rachel and Ian followed in quick succession within the space of 5 years.

In the meantime the Plymouth Brethren were becoming more and more exclusive, and in the end the restrictions were too much for Mum and Dad so they left. They did not want to lose contact with their families, even though it was at the cost of any meaningful contact with Dad’s brother George, something that caused Dad much pain. Dad insists that being in the Exclusives wasn’t all bad – after all, he’d met Mum, and he also gained a love for and deep knowledge of the Bible.

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