My father, Gordon “Nobby” Clark, who has died aged 90, was for many years a Fleet Street journalist and industrial correspondent for the Press Association.
Born in Rainham, Kent, the only child of Thomas, a brickfield worker, and Alice (nee Wildish), a nurse, Gordon went to Gillingham grammar school for boys before taking a job at the aircraft maker Short Brothers in Rochester, where he learned shorthand and typing. After military service during the second world war, he joined the Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham News as a reporter, making use of his shorthand skills to cover local council news and the activities of Gillingham football club. At the paper he met Sheila Warner, a proofreader, and they married in 1954.
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