Memories of Ken Hawker
My father, Kenelm Frederick Hawker, died suddenly on a hot summer's day in 2003. I was away for the weekend in Wales with my wife and sister when I heard he was in hospital in Leicester. Twenty minutes later he was dead. He'd had a stroke at lunchtime, spent the afternoon on the sofa with Mum trying to work out whether to call, and then calling, a doctor. As the ambulance was taking him at 5pm, he asked Mum to make phone calls to say he wouldn't be able to bake the communion bread for church the next morning. Already by then probably slowed by her undiagnosed muscular dystrophy, Mum took three hours to get together a night bag and follow in the car. By then he was in a coma.
It was devastating. Dad was 69, the same age as both my grandfathers when they died. We drove back to Mum overnight. Looking back, it feels as if for the next six months we were in a daze. I don't think Mum ever quite got over losing him. But it was a good time to die. He was concerned about becoming deaf. I was concerned he would get the dementia his mother got. We realised how much he had been supporting Mum's deteriorating health, but he missed the worst of it. He was still well known and liked locally, and friends from further away were still alive and able to travel. Over a hundred came to his funeral. It was very affirming.
I wrote a tribute which Dad's younger brother read out for me at his funeral. Some time later I came across obituaries he had written for himself. At the time I thought they were too career-focused and impersonal, but looking back at them this year I feel they were well written. He was a good father and he deserves his own voice. Here is the second draft of his obituary, which he wrote in 1999.
Kenelm Hawker, second of 3 children, grew up in South East London suburbs; his father was a civilian in the office of the Woolwich HQ of the Royal Artillery. He was educated at local proimary schools and at Eltham College, as a direct grant scholarship boy. Here he was no use on the sports field but excelled in languages, going on to Downing College to read Classics. He did not do military service, owing to a low medical grade, indicating intermittent epilepsy, which he outgrew later.
After Cambridge, in the full employment of the 50s, he decided to qualifty for some form of social work, and used 4 years as an executive civil servant to prepare himself by part-time study. Then, after a year’s Child Care Course, he worked the best part of 10 years in Birmingham, rising to a middle management position just as the “Seebohm” reforms initiated social services deparements incorporating child care. At 35 years he married, and soon afterwards moved into the new inspectorate of social services, being posted to Tyneside, which then had the “softly-softly” approach called “social work service” Though this was in retrospect the high point of his career, after 4 more years, having gained some insight into social work for disabled people, he moved for a brief period into hospital social work, then back to the Midlands in charge of social work training in the social services of Leicestershire. This used his by now trained experience but did not advance his career, which effectively ended in a reorganisation in 1989. For the next 6 years, Ken further sampled different kinds of social work activity, including the probation service, and a short spell as Assistant Secretary for his professional association. After that he devoted himself to home, garden, and the local church.
What this base summary hides, in a career belying early promise, is the interior religious struggle and development. He was brought up in the strict sect of exclusive brethren, in which he experienced the paradox of being required to declare conscientious objection to war, while his father drew his income from the Army. From Cambridge on he became embroiled in the upheavals of the brethren as their energising leadership drove them into more extremes of “separation from the world”. A promising love affair was one casualty. So was his emerging social work career; the stresses of being “put out of fellowship” made him take a year out in prep school teaching, an aberrant move on a c.v. He made a serious attempt to embrace Roman Catholicism, but by marrying an ex-Brethren sister, he learned to moderate his longing so that they both became Anglican and so brought up their children with success. Though in Lecestershire his role as a lay Anglican blossomed, he always found reason to back off from ordination as priest. With the oridination of women, which he opposed, he began to lead a life split between parochial duties and loyalty to the minority church in the “Forward in Faith” movement. Integrity and a sometimes abrasive honesty were qualities often remarked in him: in his village Anglican circles he was considered over-equipped intellectually. In retirement he stretched his mind with studies in local history, but without producing and serious research. He would have identified his vocation as being a Christian husband and father. He leaves a wife and two adult children.
I'd like to point out that I don't agree with my father's position on women priests, which was a consequence of his embracing Catholic theology after leaving the Brethren. As with many who hold that position, it didn't prevent him affirming women and my mother's opposite views. More about that below, in this (slightly edited) is the tribute I wrote for Dad's funeral, as read by my uncle. It's perhaps fair to mention that my uncle had a different view of the Brethren part of the history from Dad. I didn't understand that so much at the time I asked him to read this. Dad's obituary version might have been more acceptable to his brother.
My brother Ken was always my big brother. Not only was he taller than me but - for me - he carried with him all his life an aura of sincerity and responsibility that commanded my respect. I think these were the outstanding hallmarks of his personality and being. It is for these things that I shall chiefly remember him.
Sincerity and responsibility were also borne out by his deep and questing Christian faith that not just profoundly influenced him but was indeed a driving force all his life. So far as I am aware this never wavered and found outward expression in his regular commitment to Sunday worship, to prayer and his involvement with the local Church lately in Thornton and close by.
He must, I think, have been sorely tried by his much more light hearted younger brother. Though his kindness seldom made this evident at least to me.
However clear memories play curious tricks with one. Thinking of Ken two incidents come readily to mind where something we did together - well nearly together - influenced me in the longer term. Both occurred many years ago.
While still at school he took up running. In a distinctly unathletic family and dare I say an unathletic person this was - I think - an uncharacteristic thing to do. What he did, I must do. I well remember toiling after him, a long way after him, round the lanes of Orpington in Kent where we lived as youngsters. Sensibly - no doubt - this craze waned for him but for me it did not. Long distance running, cycling and later walking stayed with me and have given me great enjoyment. He started it.
The other event was rather different. At his instigation, it was in those days a somewhat clandestine visit to a performance of Handel’s St. Matthew's Passion at St Martins in the Fields. This event opened up for me a new and alternative world that would have a lasting impact on my life. It gave me an enjoyment of music even if I have never had either his understanding or knowledge.
Ken read Classics at Cambridge, where he was told off by a tutor for not knowing the difference between “to be” and “to exist”. After college he gave up philosophy and found his passion in social welfare. His social work career included spells working in the West Midlands, Tyneside, and Leicestershire. After the last of several retirements he took a Master’s degree in Local History at Leicester. He continued to develop this interest until he died, and had recently been working on a revision of the history of this parish.
Throughout his life, Ken continued to show his love for the family he was born into. My sister E particularly appreciated his practical support and spiritual companionship. He also became a husband to Jo and father of David and Katherine. What follows are David and Katherine’s recollections of the story of Ken’s adult life.
Our family became friends with Jo P’s family in the 50s and 60s when we were all members of a close-knit church known as the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren, and when Ken and Jo were beginning their social work careers. Our families were loving and devout Christians, as were many of our friends in the Brethren. In the 60s the Brethren changed to such an extent that its members went through much soul-searching. These times gave Ken the toughest challenges of his life. Through his decision to leave the Brethren, Ken showed his greatest strengths. First, his action made it more possible for his own brother, sister, and mother, as well as his future wife and her family, also to leave the Brethren and to rebuild their lives. Second, in standing up to a powerful church leadership which, he believed, was disobeying God, he showed a level of moral courage that set the tone for the rest of his life. Third, he had to rebuild his Christian faith from scratch. As a result, it did not merely survive, but became unshakeable.
Ken and Jo married in September 1969. In their family ceremony Ken made promises to try not to use all the saucepans to cook one meal. They became active members of their local Anglican church, first in Tyneside, and then here in Thornton. They found the Anglicans more stable than the Brethren and broad enough to accomodate their faith as it had developed, particularly Ken’s now rather Catholic leanings. Ken once wrote to the church council here explaining why he believed women should not be priests, while also delivering Jo’s letter explaining why she believed they should. This is a good illustration of the strength of their marriage and of Ken as an encouraging, loving, and caring husband, who helped Jo develop and use her talents.
David and Katherine will miss Ken greatly as a father. When they were young and he was away on business, he wrote them pictionary-style postcards for them to work out where he had been. He made birthday cakes in the shape of trains, of Concorde, of Dougall from the Magic Roundabout, and even of a map of Northumbria. Other cooking talents included creative use of leftovers, making gravy from vegetable water, plums, orange juice, or coffee. He had a flair for recycling old materials too, making garden paths out of old carpets, and a bookcase out of an electric fireplace.
Ken brought his children up to know God. In early years this sometimes included taking them to up to three services each Sunday, so that the vicar once greeted them as “It’s all the Hawkers, who come to all the services”. Ken also encouraged David and Katherine to question what they had heard, and in later years would lead long, stimulating and often amusing discussions around the dinner table.
In fact Ken suppported his children in whatever they were doing - when Katherine studied A-level English, he started to read the same books as she did so he could discuss them with her. Even in their late 20s, both David and Katherine found their father a source of encyclopaediac knowledge - an experience shared by others. As Debbie, whom Ken was pleased to welcome as a daughter-in-law two years ago, puts it, it was reassuring to know that he was there to advise about anything, without forcing his own opinions - from gardening to learning Serbo-Croat. If he didn’t know the answer, he would find out.
As his children grew up, Ken became more and more involved in the churches here in Thornton, Bagworth, and Stanton, often taking on roles he knew no-one else would fill. This also led him to be deeply involved in the village community as a whole. The list of all he did would be very long - mail used to arrive for him addressed to the Managing Director of Thornton St Peter’s Church. Among other things, until this month Ken was parish magazine editor, secretary of the Friends of St Peter’s, and baked bread for communion - the last of which will be shared today. Many will miss the sight of him (often in unusual hats), dropping notes through doors in the village. It’s remarkable that Ken kept up and enjoyed his involvement in this church, even though he had found more of a spiritual home in the Anglo-Catholic worship at St Aidan’s Church, New Parks, where he was far from uninvolved.
Ken’s own character was an inspiration to moral development, with his deep faith showing itself in humility, integrity, and a passion for justice. He challenged racial injustice and inequality when he saw it, confronting those who refused to admit gypsies, and making it seem normal to make friends with people of other faiths and races. The collection for Christian Aid in his memory is at his request - even in his death he is blessing the poor. We thank the Lord for Ken and our memories of him that he left with us. We will miss him greatly but we are grateful that he has entered eternal life with God who became Lord of his life on earth.
Click here for a tribute to Jo Hawker, and here for more blog posts.
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