ONE of the first women to be ordained a priest in the Exeter diocese, the Reverend Diana Ormsby, died recently after a long illness. Whilst she was known to many parishioners in the Brentor and nearby parishes for her compassionate and caring pastoral work, few would have been aware of the full life she had led before moving with her family to live at Lipscliffe on the banks of the River Lyd near Coryton. Born Diana Clare Silva White in 1921 in Sunderland, she was one of four siblings (with four step brothers and sisters in Canada). Her father was a priest in a church near the docks and she saw at first hand the 1920s depression in one of the poorest cities in England. After teaching in London during the war, where she spent the nights as an air warden, she joined the British Council and took the somewhat risky and unusual career path of moving to Persia (Iran) to teach female students. Her wander-lust not yet satisfied, she then joined the Colonial Service and was posted to Nigeria where she met Robert Ormsby, a career-officer in the Colonial Service. They were married in 1954 and for the next nine years Diana made a home in Nigeria for their growing family — and continued teaching — before finally leaving after Nigerian independence in 1963. Back in UK the family settled in Sunderland, then in Scotland, before moving to Devon in 1969. Here she embarked on her third career (motherhood being her second) as a farmer, rearing calves. A total novice when she started she had a real flair as a stocksman, and nurtured many sick animals back to health. Diana had long harboured thoughts of being a priest and took the first steps in 1977, studying, with Robert, at Salisbury Theological College. She became a deaconess in 1980, a deacon in 1987 and was finally ordained priest as soon as the rules of the Church of England allowed in 1994. From 1978 she and Robert worked as part of the clergy team at Brentor. Diana was a natural in the pastoral care role, and she was dearly loved by the parish for her compassion, common sense and practical approach. Shortly after her ordination she started to experience the small strokes and circulation problems which would bring about the vascular dementia and paralysis that were to mar her final years. But in spite of this cruel curtailment of her busy and active life, she still retained her personality and sweet smile right through to the end.