She is the best known black woman in Britain-Baroness Valerie Amos of Brondesbury, the Guyanese-born former leader of the UK House of Lords. Within the last ten days she has lost both of her parents Michael and Dolly. She presided over a joint funeral service for the two of them in Kingsbury Parish Church North London. Hundreds from the Guyanese diaspora attended.
Michael was a former headmaster from Wakenaam in the Essequibo who came to England over forty years ago to better himself. He was the first to die on February 18th aged 80. His beloved wife of over half a century, Dolly, died nine days later, on the very morning of his funeral. Tragedy had visited the Amos home twice in a short time.It look all of Baroness Amos’s renowned sang froid and poise to hold back the tears as she paid tribute to her parents as ‘very special’ whose motto was ‘Family First ‘ and who, to her, were simply ‘Unforgettable’ .Her nephew, Yane, grandson of the deceased, also paid tribute to the example they set and the mantras they ingrained, a good education guarantees against abject poverty’ being one. He described his grandfather as ‘a cross between Bob the Builder and Tony Blair’.
Their grand-daughter Shyko paid tribute in song.This funeral was always going to be an emotional occasion; it was made even doubly so by the death of Dolly within an hour of the start. The service was conducted by Canon Andrew White ,who has achieved some fame in the UK as the “Vicar of Baghdad’, continuing to minister to an Anglican congregation through thick and thin and more in Iraq. He had been taught by Michael Amos at school in London and described the event (and the double death) as ‘unprecedented’ in another barely disguised emotional address.
About three hundred, mainly black, packed the urban parish church in Kingsbury; there was standing room only. The congregation reflected a world which was gone or going -the original migrants to Britain from Guyana forty years ago and their descendants. Some of them, like Lady Amos, have made it here. Among the distinguished members of Britain’s black community present were Lady Patricia Scotland, the British Attorney General, Lord Waheed Alli, the television entrepreneur, Garth Crooks the former professional footballer turned sports commentator and Juliet Alexander the former TV presenter.
But the sadness and pathos of the day belonged to Lady Amos, her sister Colleen, her brother Michael and their offspring. Despite going in such tragic circumstance both Michael and Dolly Amos would have been very proud of the last hurrah arranged for them by their family. It was a double tragedy but a double celebration of their lives too.
