TRIBUTES have been paid to a father and former Thurrock Gazette editor who has passed away after a battle with Parkinson’s.

Terry Smith always had a passion for writing and became the youngest editor of the Gazette in the late Fifties.

Terry was born over his father’s drapery and haberdashery shop in Silver Street, Upper Edmonton, a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War.

At school, Terry admitted himself he was never a gifted pupil or even above average. When he failed his 11-plus exam, his parents sent him to the private Collegiate School in Winchmore Hill, which is where the writing bug started. He set up a school magazine called The Collegian.

When he left school, he began his journalistic career as a junior reporter for the Menswear Publishing Company.

In 1960, he married his childhood sweetheart, Ann, and the couple went on to have two children - Philippa in 1965 and Maxine in 1968.

On the job front, he yearned to be a reporter for a national newspaper, and in the late Fifties he joined the Dagenham Post.

He was never enamoured with Dagenham and so found himself a job on the Thurrock Gazette. He rose through the ranks and, in the early Seventies, he became the youngest editor in the then Westminster Press organisation – one of the biggest news groups of the time.

He latterly took on the editorship of the Standard Recorder and helped train people on the new computerised systems that were being brought in. But in 1992, he left journalism and a couple of years later bought a Post Office and General Store in Kingsbury Episcopi, Somerset. This was something he and Ann had always wanted to do.

They had many different escapades in Somerset but after a couple of years, they decided to move back to Great Notley in Essex, close to where their daughter Philippa was living.

Just before their 50th wedding anniversary, Terry was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease - a double blow, as Ann had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s shortly before.

He stoically continued to look after Ann until, in 2015, she fractured her pelvis and, after hospitalisation, she moved into a care home.

After a few weeks without her, Terry decided to move into the care home to be with her.

It is here, surrounded by the carers that had become his friends and his family, he died.

His daughter Philippa said: “Dad always left an impression on anyone he met.

“He had a dry sense of humour, would strike up a conversation with anyone and was unbelievably flirty.

“As a husband, he was loving, loyal and dutiful until the end. As a father, he was supportive, encouraging and most of all fun.

“The family will remember all the funny times they’ve shared.

“As he used to say ‘they broke the mould when they made me’. He was one-in-a-million.”

His lasting gift was to donate his brain to research into the causes and cures for Parkinson’s disease. The family ask that in lieu of flowers, donations are made to the Parkinson’s charity.