Our father, Don Headey, who has died aged 88, packed enough interests for 10 people into his life. Beekeeping, organic gardening, scouting, puppetry and pottery were a few of them, all underpinned by his strong Christian faith.
The son of a Methodist minister, he was born in Chalford, Gloucestershire, and moved with his family to Stockton and Sunderland before spending his teenage years in Leith, Edinburgh. It was there that, seeing the effects of drunkenness on the streets, he became a lifelong teetotaller.
Don's parents could not afford for him to continue in education so he lodged in Hampstead, north London, while working for Customs & Excise in the City. To save money, he walked to and from work, and this was probably responsible for his legendary stamina.
When war broke out he registered as a conscientious objector and spent the years 1941 to 1944 in civil defence. By then, the family had moved to Liverpool, where he met our mother, Joan. They married in 1945, beginning a loving partnership that lasted 62 years.
Don enrolled for emergency teacher training, in which he found his vocation, working in primary, secondary modern and comprehensive schools in Liverpool for the rest of his career. He became head of science at Knowsley Hey school and was at his happiest in the classroom, never having ambitions for management.
Don had joined the Scouts in Scotland, and after the war started a cub pack at Childwall Valley Methodist Church, which had been founded by his father in the 1930s. He served as district commissioner for the Childwall Scouts, in Liverpool, from 1965 to 1974.
Marrying into Liverpool's Welsh community, Don took it upon himself to learn Welsh – he was never fluent, but good enough to impress the locals on our holidays in Caernarvonshire. When we moved near to one of Liverpool's biggest synagogues, he learned enough about the Jewish faith from our neighbours to be able to give talks at a local primary school. For a while his garden seemed to grow horseradish for most of the passover meals in south Liverpool.
The organic gardening movement took off quite late in Don's life, but he embraced it with a passion and became a founder member and treasurer of Liverpool Organic Gardeners. He was much in demand as a speaker on organic gardening and on beekeeping, which he practised for more than 60 years.
Joan died in 2007. We survive him, along with his four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.