Des was born in South Wales but his family moved to Oxford when he was a small boy. During the Second World War he fought in the Pacific as a pilot in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. At the end of the war his ship docked in Japan and as he left the vessel and as he stepped onto Japanese soil he had the strangest feeling that he had come home. It wasn't until forty years later that he would understand why he had felt this.
Des had a number of jobs after being "demobbed", one of which was as an ice cream man. He met his third wife while teaching English to foreign students in Oxford. Akemi was Japanese, around fifteen years younger and disabled. Des was deeply worried that he could have killed one of her brothers during dog fights over the Pacific during the war and had to ask her if she had had any brothers who had been pilots during that conflict. To his relief she told him that she had not and so he felt he could marry her.Akemi introduced Des to Nichiren's Buddhism and the pair practised for some years in Oxford.
Around 1990 Des and Akemi travelled to Ogmore Vale to view furniture at a factory shop. While they were there, they looked into an estate agents out of curiosity. They spotted a large house for sale that had a lovely view across the valley and was a fraction of the price of a similar house in Oxford. They decided to buy it, and shortly after moved to the village of Wyndham.
They travelled back and forth to Cardiff for a couple of years to attend Buddhist meetings, but around 1993, Valley District was formed with Des and Akemi as its leaders. The district emraced all of the South Wales Valleys with a CF postcode and so covered a large area. Meetings were held in Ogmore Vale and in Aberdare.
As more people joined, so the Valley district became large and unwieldy and so it was split in two.In the west it became Bridgend district and in the East Croeso district.
Des died in 2003.