A METHODIST lay preacher of 50 years’ service has died aged 95.
Stanley Reed, of Stainborough Road, Dodworth, was born in 1921 at Pickering Buildings, Barugh Green, where as a child he contracted double pneumonia and was not expected to survive.
In his teens he deliberately got himself sacked from the pit to get another job which would enable him to enlist in 1941. He was sent to Bombay, then Bjapur and Burma fighting the Japanese, returning in 1945. The following year he met his wife Joyce at the wedding of her sister Edith who married Frank Mount - Stanley was best man and Joyce was bridesmaid.
He worked on various opencast sites and in the 1950s began work at Dodworth Colliery in the washery, where he remained until retirement in 1986.
During the early 1960s he had gone to college and became a Methodist lay preacher, a role he continued throughout the Barnsley circuit for 50 years. He was still preaching when, aged 91, he was involved in a serious road accident while leaving Rosehill Chapel at Dodworth, in which he suffered severe head injuries and spent months in hospital.
He died on Sunday September 10 at Barnsley Hospital following numerous chest infections leading to pneumonia.
He leaves five children, ten grand children, 18 great grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will take place at Rosehill Chapel, Dodworth, on Wednesday at 1pm, followed by cremation at Barnsley. Donations in lieu of flowers will go to BIADS and Rosehill Chapel.
