Cicely Hollingsworth 15.2.1929 – 20.12.2014

Cicely will long be remembered as one of the kindest, most active, serious, and thoughtful, also most knowledgeable, members of the congregation in recent decades. In every respect, she possessed a tough constitution. As late as September last year, she was leading a country walk for the Church Wanderers, whom she led and ran for many years.

Cicely and her husband Geoffrey, a retired naval officer and keen cyclist, first came to Hamburg in 1978, when he joined the frigate sales unit of Blohm & Voss shipyard. Cicely was a graduate in French and German of St. Andrew’s University. During Geoffrey’s naval career they had lived in both Oberammergau and Toulon, and had a daughter and a son, Lesley and Robert. Of the three grandchildren, Cicely was especially pleased to see Anna graduate at Cambridge last summer.

After Geoffrey’s early death in 1995, Cicely was elected People’s Warden, and as such played a central part in the life of the church on into the 21st century. For years she was one of the church delegates to the Council of Anglican and Episcopal Churches in Germany (CAECG), often staying on after the bi-annual meetings to visit the host church. Closer home, until the end she gave up a lot of her time to representing St Thomas Becket at the ACKH, or Working Group of Christian Churches in Hamburg. As one of the church’s relatively few car owners, she regularly collected supplies for its Fair Trade stall and was otherwise a pillar of the Mothers Union. She was a generous hostess, among others for the Western Hamburg House Group.

Aside from all these group commitments, Cicely was an immensely thoughtful and considerate friend to people of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds. She was invariably generous with her time, a good listener, especially for people with problems. She tended to shun frivolity, but participated actively in the life of several English-speaking associations in Hamburg. She did so despite having a home in England and family there and in Finland, which she visited annually for Christmas.

Cicely personified the ideal of Christian service, and will be seriously missed.