My father, Don Bryant, who has died aged 91, promoted others’ wellbeing throughout his working life in a variety of careers, including statistician, social scientist and, finally, non-stipendiary minister in the Church of England.
Don was born in Plaistow, Essex, the son of Thomas Bryant, an RAF flight sergeant in both world wars, and his wife, Emily (nee Brewer). He attended Walliscote school, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, having been evacuated there during the second world war.
Returning to London and leaving school at 15, he went to work in the City as a runner in the Stock Exchange. Completing national service, though, he found a new focus, and over the next few years, while working in various jobs, he took a general science degree, studying at night school, from the University of London, followed by a BSc in statistics, which he passed in 1958 with first-class honours, from Birkbeck College.
He worked for a time as a research chemist and then as an industrial statistician at EverReady. In 1964 he joined the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and throughout the 1970s he worked with the hotel, catering, construction, shipping and logging industries as well as for government departments in the UK and aboard. Projects took him to Abu Dhabi, Venezuela, Canada and the US. He was co-director of the Nato manpower conference in Stresa in 1977. Don was always interested in helping people to develop – via the role of unions and organisational culture – and in how to address the rise of technology in human-based industries.
All this paints a dry picture of a man who was anything but that. His interest was in people and that is what energised his work throughout his career. And in 1985 he changed direction again to study for ordination in the Church of England. He was ordained as a deacon in 1988 and then as a priest in 1992.
In 1996 he qualified as a counsellor at Roehampton Institute (University of Surrey) – at an age when many others might be spending more time on the golf course or the allotment.
He became honorary curate of St Matthew’s, Redhill, Surrey, and often preached at other Surrey and Sussex churches.
Don married Mary Shepherd in 1950. Together they moved to a retirement village at Ditchling, East Sussex, in 2010. He enjoyed music, theatre and poetry and continued to do long-distance walks into his 70s. He continued with his ministry into his 80s.
Mary died in 2013. Don is survived by their daughters, Sally and me.
