Chad Varah, 1911-2007

Edward Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritan movement and a contributor to various comics publication most notably the feature Dan Dare, died on November 8. He was 95 years old.

Varah was born in Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire in 1911, the oldest of nine children. His father was the vicar of Barton. Varah's education included a degree at Oxford. He became an ordained Anglican priest in 1946. The roots of what would become the Samaritans came in the young priest's experiences working with children and common folk that felt isolate and alone, even suicidal, as in the case of a 13-year-old girl who killed herself over misinformation about menstruation whose funeral over which he presided.

A fruitful parish assignment in the early 1950s led to the creation of the Samaritans in 1953, at first a handful of lay volunteers assigned to work person to person with people isolated or otherwise considering thoughts of suicide, eventually a movement of thousands with over 200 centers in the United Kingdom and an international arm. Varah served in various offices in the group, but also had a falling out with some of its aims late in life. That was merely another unconventional development in a hugely unconventional life, which saw Varah contribute sex advice columns to adult magazines and, at an early point in their development, work on comics features in boys magazines.

Through his friend and fellow vicar Marcus Morris, with whom he shared the opinion about the dullness of church publications, Varah became a scripting rock for the early Eagle magazine. There, while keeping to his parish responsibilities, he contributed scripts to an ongoing feature named Plot Against the World and back-cover biographical strips. In his lovely obituary, Steve Holland points at Mark the Youngest Disciple and The Travels of Marco Polo as Varah's best script work. Varah is probably best known for his contributions to the extremely popular Dan Dare, both as a kind of specialist editor that checked over the feature's handsome artwork for a basic level of scientific rigor, and as an early script writer.

He would later pen a play Nobody Understands Miranda, which would serve as the basis for a BBC program about the Samaritan movement and Varah's role in same, and in 1992 he formed Men against Genital Mutilation of Girls which proselytized against that practice in East Africa.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Doris, in 1993, and a son who died in April. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.
 
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