requiescat in pace

An Anglican priest, Chad Varah conducted his first funeral at the St. Peter-in-Eastgate church in Lincoln, England, in 1935 -- for a 13-year-old girl who had committed suicide. "Little girl, I didn't know you, but you have changed the rest of my life for good," he said later: he decided to concentrate on helping those contemplating suicide. By the 1950s he learned that there were three suicides a day in London, so in 1953 he founded The Samaritans (now simply called Samaritans) in London, the world's first crisis hotline service, offering non-religious telephone aid to people contemplating suicide. It has since grown to 202 branch offices in the U.K. staffed by more than 15,000 volunteers. The idea went international when Varah founded Befrienders International in 1983, which now operates in more than 40 countries. The 13-year-old girl had committed suicide because she thought she had a shameful disease; in reality, she had simply reached menarche. Varah thus fought his entire life for "well-informed" sex education, which made prudes call him "a 'dirty old man' by the time I was 25," he once said. He ignored the critics and kept at it: in 1992, with the influx of East Africans to England, he founded MAGMOG -- Men against Genital Mutilation of Girls. Dr. Varah didn't retire until he was 92, and he died 2007Nov8 at 95.

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