IT was standing room only at Southend Crematorium when friends, relatives and work colleagues said goodbye to former Echo employee Ken Rolph.

Born Kenneth Morgan Rolph on October 28, 1930, he was the youngest of four brothers and was raised in Rochford.

Aged 14, he signed up with the Southend Standard as a messenger boy in 1944, and later trained as a typesetter.

Four years later, he left to do National Service in Malta, but was back at the Southend Standard building in Clifftown Road, Southend, barely a year later.

Two decades later in 1969, he was still with the company when it launched the Echo newspaper.

In the same year, he moved to the paper's new headquarters in Basildon, where he worked as a computer operator and managed the day-to-day operations of the computer room.

But it was a move which took immense personal courage, according to his daughter Jane McCain.

She said: "He had been diagnosed at the age of 39 with Parkinson's disease, but managed to stay active for many, many years.

"In recent years his health became noticeably effected by the disease.

"But through all this his wife and my mother, Beryl, cared and looked after him - putting his needs first at their home, in Rectory Avenue, Ashingdon."

Throughout his life Ken was a keen sportsman.

He enjoyed cricket, played football for the Monarchs and hockey for the Westcliff Hockey Club.

He retired from the Echo in April, 1988, at 58, after working for both the Standard and the Echo for 46 years. He died in Southend Hospital on March 28, aged 77, leaving his wife, two children and two grandchildren.