Former Oxford Mail and Times and Witney Gazette reporter Molly White has died aged 86.

Born Mary O’Loughlin, she grew up in the Essex countryside where she developed a love of both horse-riding and writing about horses.

Molly began her journalism career relatively late when she started writing for the Witney Gazette in 1965 after her husband Bill had been posted to RAF Brize Norton.

The Gazette was taken over by the Westminster Press Group and she became part of the staff of the Oxford Mail and Times, continuing to produce news reports and features for the area, notably the west Oxfordshire air base.

Molly developed an enthusiasm for flying and wrote books about a massive Belfast cargo plane and food aid airlifted to Ethiopia during the famine of the 1980s.

She even learned to fly in her 50s and part-owned a light aircraft flying out of Oxford airport.

Witney reporter David Horne said: “Molly was such an enthusiast. I remember once going for a spin with her in a Cessna.

“We seemed to bump along through air pockets and, despite my anxieties, she so obviously relished being at the controls.

“In the office, whatever the story she had the same outward interest in people and things.”

She and her husband settled into retirement at Minster Lovell, near Witney. Bill, who developed Parkinson’s Disease, died several years ago and she went to live at the Cotswold Home, near Burford.

You can add your memories of Molly at Lasting Tribute.