A former RAF veteran and journalist who was an editor of the Ilford Recorder has died.

Ron Vince died on March 30 aged 99 and he had a long career in journalism after service in the air force.

He volunteered to train as a pilot and completed his initial flying course on Tiger Moths.

But the Second World War ended before he finished his advanced training in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Ron’s nearest wartime brush with death was not in the air — but in the back garden of the family home in the East End during the Blitz.

The family all survived a German air raid in an Anderson shelter which was only three or four yards from the rim of a bomb crater when they climbed out.

Ron was demobilized in 1947 and began to fulfil his ambition to be a journalist. He had taken a first step before his call-up at 18, while working as a borough council clerk, by learning shorthand and typing.

He built up five years’ experience in Essex and Devon as a reporter and sub-editor. Then in 1952 Ron joined the staff of The Star, one of London’s three evening newspapers at the time, as a sports sub-editor.

Ron returned to local journalism in Essex in 1960, when The Star and its sister daily News Chronicle ceased publication.

He became editor of the Ilford Recorder in the mid-60s and was later group editor of the paper’s parent company Home Counties Newspapers, which included the Romford Recorder and Newham Recorder.

Ron then moved to Fleet Street in 1976 to be The Daily Telegraph’s chief parliamentary and politics sub-editor before retiring in 1990 — yet continued working two days a week until he turned 80.

His energies were then centred on Mountnessing, the Essex village where he lived.

Ron was elected to the parish council and served on several committees, including Friends of Mountnessing Windmill which takes care of the 200-year-old restored mill. He was also village correspondent for the Brentwood Gazette.

Ron and his wife Thelma moved to Sussex in 2005 to be near their daughter in Seaford. He still found a use for his journalistic talent, producing the members’ magazine for Seaford Museum three times a year well into his 90s.

His recreational passion was golf, a member of Maylands Golf Club between Romford and Brentwood for 50 years and honorary member since 2005. He then joined Seaford Golf Club and continued playing until he was 95. But everything stopped for Covid.

His wife died in 2009 aged 86, a costume designer and book illustrator who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1948, the year they married.

Ron and Thelma Vince are survived by their daughter Janice and son Russ.