Hunched forward, head drooped, he sat alone at the front waiting to be wheeled back to his room. I knelt low to achieve eye contact.
“Hello Jim. Remember me, Henry Decock. I was here a couple years ago researching in the archives for Fr. Kees de Cock. We sat at the same table for meals.”
He began chuckling, “I am sorry, I don’t. I don’t remember much these days. Forgive me.”
Then he held my hands, smiling.
“I just wanted to say hello and I have missed you at our table. I understand you attend the morning masses and are otherwise confined to your room.”
“Yes, yes. Thank you. You are kind to have stopped.”
I stood up as the nurse grabbed the handles to transport Jim away. It would be our only encounter on this trip. And our last.
Father James Daley passed away November 3. Born July 13, 1933 in Middlesburgh, England, Jim was ordained a Mill Hill Missionary priest in 1960 and assigned to the Tororo diocese in Uganda. He retired to Herbert House in 2005. Despite facing health challenges in his later years, Jim remained cheerful, sociable and full of stories about his experiences in Uganda.
He shared some of those stories with me in 2024, my first visit to Freshfield, after dinner, in the lounge, eager to laugh about a number of his exploits.
“A bunch of us were in Rome for some seminars, mandatory training and a brief holiday from our parishes in Uganda. Well, we couldn’t stay in our usual spot because the Bishops were in town so we were displaced to a small hotel with an elevator which we were told not to use. One night a small group of us went out to eat, had a few beers and were piss drunk when we got back to the hotel. We did not want to climb the stairs so we boarded the elevator to the top, then back down, then back up. We spent half an hour riding the elevators, talking and laughing of course. A fellow priest had retired to bed early and complained. We had a wonderful time.”
“You know, I completed my first two years of theological education in Roosendaal. A number of us English seminarians were sent there even though none of us could speak a word of Dutch. Good thing our classes were in English but outside of the classroom, we simply had to figure out the language for ourselves. I learned to smoke in Roosendaal. Yea, we would hang around outside on breaks. The building was across from the factory and everyone smoked, so of course, I began as well. And I learned quite a few Dutch swear words.”
Known for his humour, lively conversations and strong sense of loyalty to the Mill Hill Missionaries, he leaves behind a lasting legacy of faith, dedication and service to the Church and the communities he served.
“The Superior General was Father McLaughlin. Jock. Tough guy. Although he mellowed as he got older. A good man.”
“I have to tell you about an African who worked in an adjoining parish. He became a Brother with the White Fathers and declared, ‘I am a Black White Father Brother’. It still makes me laugh.”
“The first time I really felt like an equal to other priests was early on in Uganda. The Bishop asked me to take his confession. Me. The new guy. I had became one of them. You know, curates and pastors heard each others confessions. It was a sign of respect.”
Those were the stories I wrote in my notebook afterwards, smiling to myself with each read. They were the stories of young men who learned to follow orders in preparation for when they arrived in the field and went where they were told. As missionaries to provide the pastoral and social needs of a community, they functioned as priests and as people equally, in a lifetime of service, engaging in a world vastly foreign to their earlier lives. Ordinary people of humble origins, with their own personalities, their own mannerisms, their own hearts. Jim never knew Uncle Kees; they had been assigned to different dioceses. Yet he was another conduit into the world of Father Kees de Cock; both were Mill Hill Missionaries in the 1960’s as the church was changing with Vatican II, and in the 1970’s when Idi Amin ruled Uganda with lethal force and tyrannical measures.
During my last meal at Herbert House in 2024, Jim asked if I would return.
“Yes, of course. And when I do, I will ask some more questions and hear more of your stories. It will help me with telling my story of Uncle Kees.”
We give thanks to God for his life and missionary vocation, and pray that he may enjoy eternal rest in the presence of the Lord. May he rest in peace.
