A LOVING, hard-working and highly respected former Essex Chronicle managing director has died aged 91 after battling Alzheimer's disease.
Sporting enthusiast Edward John Shead, affectionately known as Ted, served the Chronicle for 27 years before quitting in 1975.
His daughter Barbara Spence paid tribute to a "brilliant father" after he died peacefully in a private Milton Keynes care home on Tuesday, August 6.
"He was highly respected by both management and his men," said the 64-year-old of Harberd Tye, Chelmsford, who also worked as a Chronicle journalist.
"I went to work there as a trainee when I was 17 and I was really, nervous. I didn't know how they were going to react to the MD's daughter. But it was so obvious to me how much they liked him as a person. I was teased about who he was.
"There was so much sadness when he left."
In 1975, Ted, who has written the unpublished 'The Chronicle of an Essex Man', became embroiled in an argument with the new owners of the newspaper Northcliffe Media, who proposed the introduction of a daily evening paper.
After being told to 'toe the line' in an urgent London meeting, he returned to his office and packed his belongings, never returning to Westway.
In Ted's book he describes his leaving card as one of his most cherished possessions, and says he wrote back in thanks to all 30 who signed it. The Evening Herald paper was scrapped two years later.
Ted, who served in the West African Frontier Force during World War Two, met his wife-of-69 years Hilda when he was shipped to India. The two went on to have four children, Colleen, 68, Alan, 66, Susan, 59, and Barbara.
Ted, who also played in the Chronicle cricket team, started as a bookkeeper at the newspaper in May 1948, when the Chronicle was no bigger than ten pages published on a Friday, but soon progressed to MD by the age of 50.
He was responsible for organising a 200th anniversary edition, followed by a 1964 souvenir edition complete with a front page dedicated to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Ted and Hilda retired to a Beaverbrook House flat in Bletchley, devoted to those in the printing industry.
"He was a brilliant father," added Barbara, who remembers her days fondly in the banter and smoke-filled news room.
"He managed to scrape money together in his early years to send us to private schools," she added.
"He didn't have a lot of money but he still found time to decorate the home, plant vegetables and play cricket.
"Alzheimer's is a cruel illness. I remember looking at him one day and realised he didn't know me, and I didn't know him."
