Obituary: Rev Alex Leckey, former Methodist minister of Walls church on Shetland who retired to the isles

Alex Leckey was a man who endeared himself to a wide range of people and is warmly remembered throughout Shetland – especially for his work as minister at Walls Methodist Church and after he retired to Sandwick on the island.

Leckey never knew his father, who was killed on D-Day, and he was brought up by his mother, Elsie Norman, in Southport. He attended Christ Church School in the town and then found work locally –he particularly enjoyed working at the local railway station. When the Preston to Southport line was closed, Leckey bought many of the old BR signs and the station clock. In his twenties, he emigrated to South Africa but he soon returned, unable to reconcile himself to the apartheid regime.

Back in the UK, Leckey again assumed a variety of positions and set about gaining further academic qualifications, studying for O levels at night school. With this came a determination then to study for the ministry at Queen’s theological college in Birmingham. Leckey’s first posting was to Shetland where the family had a somewhat fraught arrival. On landing in Lerwick, they discovered their furniture had been stranded somewhere en route and only arrived three days after they did. The imposing stone-fronted manse, situated beside the church, had no electricity or heating.

His charge, Walls Methodist Church, is 13 miles south of Lerwick and had an active congregation to which Leckey ministered with a special enthusiasm and care. All his children attended the Happy Hansel School in Walls and his daughter Eirian Walsh Atkins fondly recalls being put in a sailing boat at the age of six, “with a schoolmate and being packed off to sail my way round the Vaila Voe as part of our education”.

The congregation was widely dispersed and visits involved much travelling, walking over muddy fields and taking ferries to the two northernmost islands, Yell and Unst. Leckey much enjoyed taking the wedding of the lighthouse keeper from Muckle Flugga, the most northerly lighthouse in Scotland.

Leckey and his family involved themselves in the day-to-day life of the islanders and became very much part of the tight-knit community. They became accustomed to a round trip of 50 miles for the weekly shop and they reared sheep and chickens and grew their own vegetables. A shepherd taught Leckey and the children how to shear sheep. In the long dark nights, heavy snow often meant no power, no heat and no visits from the minister.

Although Leckey was the minister of Walls Methodist Church for only two years (1984-6) he much enjoyed his time in Shetland and one of his sons was born in Lerwick.

At one church service, Leckey picked up the steward on his way and dropped him off afterwards. On another wintry Sunday, the steward was the only member of the congregation, but Leckey insisted that the service continue and the collection was duly taken and counted.

Leckey moved back to Shetland following his retirement in 1992 and lived in Sandwick, south of Lerwick for over ten years. As long as his health allowed Leckey helped with services and pastoral care throughout the island. As before he involved himself in the community and became a keen baker of cakes: winning a baking contest for his fruit cake.

In 1986, Leckey moved to the Midlands and was centred around Lichfield. It was soon after this, in the late eighties, that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Although Leckey did not allow the disease to interfere with his ministry, he and his wife Kathleen separated. They remained close, and when the disease worsened, Leckey returned to live with Kathleen and they jointly conducted services and celebrated communion with their congregation. They remarried in 2007.

He faced the advance of Parkinson’s with fortitude and courage. He wrote to his daughter a few years ago, “The drugs do have some bad side-effects, they are better than being paralysed or shaking out of control. Having said all this, I am not giving up or depressed. In fact the Parkinson’s has made me, I believe, a much better person than I was, so it is like a balance scale, it evens things out.”

Leckey was proud of his Scottish roots. These emanated from his grandmother, Catherine Mackenzie Norman, and he wore the Old Mackenzie tartan with much pride. Unofficially, he took Mackenzie as his middle name. At his funeral, a piper played Flowers of the Forest, which he had especially asked to be played.

He is survived by Kathleen, whom he first wed in 1976, and their children, Iain, Rebekah, Peter, Jonathan and Eirian, and six grandchildren.

Alasdair Steven