Canon Gordon Rideout

When I arrived at All Saints’ Eastbourne, I was fortunate to find there were two excellent musicians in place. One was the organist David Woodward and the other was an older man, Donald Sprinck. My memories of Donald are of a wise and gracious man always willing to give time and to help me in my musical ineptitude, and of the beautiful tunes which he composed, but also of his firmness when asked to compose a new tune for a modern hymn, and his refusal if he felt that the words of the hymn did not glorify God.

One of the features of his time at All Saints’ was his piano playing both before and after the midweek Holy Communion service. Some of the congregation would come early to enjoy listening as Donald played. At the end of the service he would always play a piece that reflected and complemented the subject of the sermon during the service. This was always impromptu, as he had no idea what the sermon would be about apart from the broad direction of the church’s year.

My second memory is of a precious time that I had with Donald shortly before his death. As many will know, Donald suffered with a severe speech impediment which must have been a great burden to him. One day I visited Donald in the nursing home where he was a patient. He was clearly very weak but amazingly, he wanted to talk about a wide range of things, especially about his love for Christ and how good God had been to him. At the end of my time I prayed with him and very soon after, he left this life and stepped into glory. It was only as I walked back to the vicarage that I suddenly realised that Donald had not stammered once in that conversation; it was as though the healing and freedom of eternity had already dawned upon him. There was a real sense in which Donald, like Enoch of old, “…walked with God and was not, because God had taken him”.

It was such a privilege to have known him.

Gordon Rideout