Reporter Sue Austin bows out after 44 years meeting 'ordinary Shropshire people doing extraordinary things'
Still in her late teens, Sue Austin had only been in the news business for less than a year when she reported on the wedding of a disabled bride who had defied the odds to walk down the aisle on her big day.
Sue Wood, who died last year, went on to become a leading disabled athlete, a campaigner for disability rights, and the familiar consort to Martin Wood, who found fame as the world's tallest town crier.
Meanwhile Sue Austin spent more than four decades reporting on the broad variety of human life across Shropshire and Mid Wales.
Sue puts down her notepad and pen for the last time today after 44 years with the Shropshire Star and its sister titles.
From covering William and Kate's wedding in London to being on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman and taking to the skies in RAF helicopters, the long-serving reporter has enjoyed a rollercoaster of a career.
"I've learnt to scuba dive, surf and abseil and even been part of the Silver Chippers marching band in the Crop Over Festival in Barbados," she says.
"I've interviewed pop stars and politicians, sporting heroes and my own heroes.
"But the most amazing part of that career has been interviewing ordinary people doing extraordinary things."
Then Sue Moir, her journalistic career began in 1980 as a trainee reporter on the Shrewsbury Chronicle.
"It truly was the life of a junior, typing up – yes, on a typewriter – weddings and funerals, and being the office tea girl three times a day," she recalls.
But it was the following year, The International Year of Disabled Persons, when she discovered her great love - writing what is known in the trade as 'human interest stories'.
She recalls joining families on a march to Downing Street, demanding more funding for seriously ill children, and reporting on a successful campaign by Shropshire women to get the breast cancer drug Herceptin approved for use on the NHS. She also covered Des James' fight for justice following the death of his daughter and other soldiers at Deepcut Barracks in Surrey.
"I've been completely humbled as families facing the most unimaginable heartache and tragedy talked to me about loved ones lost and maybe their campaigns to ensure future changes or fundraising in memory of those close to them," she says.
"Their faces and their words have stayed with me across the decades."
In 1987 she covered the story of five-year-old Joanne Harris from Shrewsbury, who was born with Down's syndrome.
Joanne shot to fame 13 years later when Craig Phillips, the first winner of Big Brother, donated his £70,000 prize money to her appeal for a heart lung transplant.
Sadly, she fell ill with an infection and died in 2008, aged 25.
Oli Harrison, born with a major heart defect, was also five years old when he was given just six months to live.
"He couldn't walk far and struggled to talk," Sue recalls. "He lay on the floor and drew me a picture that I still have."
Shortly after, he was given a life-saving heart transplant, and now 16, he has made a name for himself as a talented cricketer.
"That phone call from his mum Emma soon after to say he was in surgery to have a heart transplant was brilliant, as has been seeing him blossom into a wonderful teenager and cracking cricketer," Sue says.
In the early days, a van would arrive twice a day to collect the reporters' stories and take them to head office in Telford where they would be set by the printers.
"With no mobile phones, when we were reporting away from the office we had to find red telephone boxes – and keep a supply of 2p pieces in my purse," she says.
"We would read over our stories, scribbled out in notebooks if we had time, to the 'copytakers' who would type them up for us."
She remembers one phone box in north Shropshire, which always had a goat tied up outside.
"Much more nervous than I an now, I always kept my fingers crossed that the rope didn't break," she said.
The Shropshire Star's first 'mobile phone' was shared by photographers, and was attached to a battery the size of a small suitcase.
The freezing winter of 1981-82 also sticks in the mind, not least because of the long walk back to Harlescott when the frozen diesel gummed up the buses.
Sue's career with the company has seen her work at offices across Shropshire and Mid Wales, including Wem, Newtown, Welshpool, Market Drayton and her home town of Oswestry. She also worked at the former Shropshire Star headquarters in Telford where she had stints as acting women's editor and news editor.
While Sue has loved her time with the newspaper, it hasn't always been easy.
"There have been tough times, times when sadly the actions of some of the national press were reprehensible and local reporters were tarred with the same brush," she says.
"The actions of the national press when it was revealed that Princess Diana's bodyguard was from Shropshire were appalling and I was ashamed to be part of the profession.
"More recently journalists, like many people, face online ridicule and trolling and it's hard to brush it off - particularly when it's personal."
Sue, 62, insists she has no plans to spend retirement growing old gracefully.
A friend gave me a sign that hangs in our loo: "When I get old I don't want people thinking 'what a sweet old lady' but thinking, 'Oh, ****, what is she up to now?'"
