The Echo says farewell to long-serving colleague

Terry Cotgrove, a former sub-editor whose career with the Echo spanned a remarkable 50 years, will be laid to rest on Monday after losing a fiercely-fought battle with cancer at the age of 69.

Terry began his career with the old Southend Standard in April 1962, as a 15-year-old apprentice and ended it with retirement at the age of 65 in April 2012.

While Terry loved his work, he had looked forward to a retirement filled with all the hobbies he loved, particularly sailing on his beloved boat Penny.

Cruelly, illness robbed him of the chance of a carefree retirement but his heartbroken widow Sandra said he never once gave in to his misfortune and continued enjoy his favourite activities to the end.

She said: "He never gave up. He was always jolly. He always put on a brave face and was always positive, Event to the last day he was planning a trip out on his boat.

"He loved his work and was passionate about his family. We would go hiking and mountain climbing, hill climbing and had many caravanning holidays. He loved his garden too."

Terry grew up in Leigh and there was very little he didn't know about the town and the Southend borough. There were also few who didn't know him.

Sandra said: "He was loved by many people and very well known. He was a member of Leigh Sailing Club and that was his main hobby and I used to go out with him. He lived for the club.

"He also played badminton twice a week right up until May and bowled with the Essex Bowling Club. In April we went to Venice as it was his dream to go there. He absolutely loved it."

The family paid tribute to the team of doctors and nurses at Southend Hospital who cared for Terry throughout his illness, particularly the haematology department, Elizabeth Lowry and Kitty Hubbard wards and the critical care unit.

Despite rounds of chemotherapy and stem cell treatment for multiple myeloma, Terry succumbed to an infection on Monday.

Sandra, 66, who married Terry 19 years ago, said: "He loved life and just wanted to live as long as he could. He was always thinking of the future and looking ahead.

"We didn't quite make it to our 20th wedding anniversary."

Terry will be sorely missed by the many colleagues who grew to love and admire him over many years.

In a look back at his epic career by the Echo's Tom King, Terry summed it up by saying: “When I started it was a job for life. It was a coveted job. If you got in, you stayed there. Why move?”

Terry also leaves behind son Mark, 28, Zara, 24 from a previous marriage and stepchildren, Sandra's son and daughter, Thomas, 45, and Petra 42 along with step grandchildren Laura 15 and Marco ten.

The family are inviting all who knew Terry to attend his funeral which will be held at Southend Crematorium at 12noon on Monday, August 22. There will be family flowers only but donations can be made to the RNLI and Myeloma UK.

REPORTERS, proprietors, editors, they came and went. For 50 years, however, one figure has remained a constant presence behind south Essex newspapers.

Terry Cotgrove joined the old Southend Standard in April 1962, as a 15-year-old apprentice.

He has remained as a man behind the headlines of Southend and Basildon ever since.

“I’ve never worked anywhere else, or wanted to,” he says.

Terry’s career began in the days of hot metal, when newspaper typeface was forged on the spot from a pot of molten lead. It has straddled the 1969 birth of the Echo, the arrival of Newspaper House’s first computer screen, the twilight and departure of the giant onsite presses which used to rock newspaper buildings, and the emergence of online news.

Now the final headline approaches. Terry, assistant chief sub-editor of the Echo, is retiring at the end of this week, the last link with a historic period in the world of journalism. In an era when editorial staff routinely hop from paper to paper, Terry anchored to the same publication for 50 years, becoming a piece of living history in his own right.

“When I started it was a job for life,” Terry says. “It was a coveted job. If you got in, you stayed there. Why move?”

Terry has loved newspapers since broadsheets were bigger than he was.

“As a child, I was very early with my reading,” he says. “I remember spreading out the old Southend Standard on the floor, lying down and reading it from cover to cover.”

By the time he presented himself at the old Standard House, in Clifftown Road, he was already a time-served, ink-smeared newspaperman, at least in one way. As a paperboy, he had delivered copies of the Standard since the age of 12.

The love and enthusiasm must have shone through. When he applied for a printing apprenticeship, he was accepted at the end of the interview.

In 1962, the Standard was an unchanged, unchanging Southend institution.

“When I started, it was near enough as it had been 100 years before,” says Terry.

There were no rival publications on Standard territory. Local radio was unheard of. Neither Terry nor anyone else aboard the Standard ship had any inkling of the convulsions due to hit the newspaper industry less than a decade later.

The paper repaid its privileged position by guaranteeing intensive coverage. Never miss a story, was the first principle Terry learnt.

“If a pin dropped in Southend, we reported it,” he says.

The Standard was still a family business, run in paternalist fashion by the Burrows family. Managing director John Burrows – “Mr John”, as he was known to all – used to hold annual summer garden parties for staff at his country home in Paglesham. “It was like a big family, really,” says Terry.

Conditions within Standard House, however, like so much of the paper, were still essentially Victorian.

Terry recalls: “There was molten metal flying around everywhere. A health and safety officer would have had a heart attack. But we just took it for granted and got on with the job.”

Terry cut his teeth at the giant printing presses of Standard House, then moved on through a range of specialised jobs, including editing, proof-reading, typesetting, sub-editing and training.

Always, he was at the forefront of new technology and other changes.

In 1969, he was one of the team who helped to launch the Echo, and spearhead the shift of the company’s main base from Southend to Basildon. “I was always one to volunteer for new processes,” he says. “And I still am.”

The second half of the 20th century was a restless, often dissatisfied place, driven by aspiration, and newspapers reflected this.

But Terry – unflappable, reliable, amused, but never irritated by the pandemonium around him – ran his life to a different tune.

The urge to be constantly moving, on, or up, never infected him. He always chose to remain close to his roots. These roots run deep in the locality. The Cotgroves arrived in the area in the 17th century, decided that this was just the place for them, and have been colonising Southend ever since.

Cotgroves pop up in every sphere of local life, but in particular, they are a fishing family. Terry was raised among a large clan of Cotgroves in Leigh, where he still lives (his wife Sandra also has a home in Austria, where she has family connections). For a Cotgrove of Leigh, the sea was always second nature.

It was not something you considered, just something you did. “I was going out sailing and cockling with fishermen as far back as I can remember,” he says. “Sailing was never something I learnt consciously. I just picked it up. It’s always been there and I’ve always done it.”

For Terry, the sea is a place to relax and to be content. And he’s passed on his love of sailing to his two children, Mark, 23, and Zara 20.

But not for him the round-theworld solo voyage or even the bronze Commodore’s Cup third class at the dinghy race.