Clifford Jordan was a music teacher, born in 1940, who was a councillor at a very young age - so young that many now could not really remember him - but a friend has.
"Just before Christmas I was told of the passing of Clifford Jordan. I was aware of his failing health and of his battle with Parkinson's over his final years and sadly had been unable to visit him this past year.
"Clifford was very much a part of Rye. He was a Rye character in every sense. He taught me both piano and singing from the age of seven enabling me to become a cathedral chorister at Canterbury. So began an association and later became a valued friendship from which I have many fond memories, humour never being far away.
"I can see him now scurrying down Cinque Ports Street in his black crushed velvet jacket, fedora jauntily angled - no doubt having just returned from a half day at some local private school, on the way to the bookies before disappearing in his Triumph Spitfire to play the organ at Peasmarsh church, as a jobbing organist, with the prospect of a council meeting that evening in his role as an independent town councillor and champion to the small man. All of this in a day's work.
"Periodically, I would see his bespectacled face appear in the Sussex Express alerting us to some local injustice. He would remark to me how he saw his job to be a general nuisance to the powers that be. I hope that maybe we will be able to celebrate at a later date his extraordinary and colourful life at a more appropriate event among many like minded people who had the good fortune to know Clifford."
