A PROLIFIC newspaper letter writer has died aged 88.

Gladys Sadler, of Cholsey, wrote to the Mail’s sister papers Herald Series more than 100 times over 50 years on a number of subjects. She was a respected member of her community and also a volunteer at the Free Church in her village.

Gladys Sadler (nee Cook) was born in Charlbury on July 24, 1925, to Jesse and Ellen Cook. Her father worked at a plant nursery in Cholsey, where she grew up.

She attended the village school, leaving at the age of 14. During the Second World War in 1941 she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, working around the UK and then later in Brussels, where she was stationed as a rangefinder in 1945 when Germany surrendered.

After returning home to Cholsey she met a former school friend, Ken Sadler, at a village dance in 1945.

They were to marry in 1947 at St Mary’s Church, Cholsey.

They moved to Honey Lane in 1950, where Mrs Sadler was to remain for the rest of her life.

That same year she and her husband had their first child, Wendy, followed by Brian in 1951 and Jane in 1956. Her husband worked as a self-employed construction worker in and around Oxfordshire.

Mrs Sadler had several interests including knitting, volunteering for her local Free Church chapel and her prodigious letter writing.

She wrote to the Herald, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail covering many subjects including a campaign to stop a memorial being built in Cholsey for Princess Diana in 1998 as she and other residents argued the money should go to the local hospital.

It is thought that she wrote about one letter a month and also wrote a book about the difficulties of depression, called They Pray For Me, which detailed how her life in religion helped her cope with the condition which afflicted her throughout her life. It was published in 1990.

In her final years, she struggled with breast cancer which was to spread and become liver cancer.

For the last few weeks of her life she was cared for at Winterbrook Nursing Home, in Wallingford.

Mrs Sadler died at the home on March 9.

A funeral service was held at West Berkshire Crematorium on March 26.

Her husband passed away in 1983, after suffering from a serious heart condition.

She is survived by her three children, Wendy, 64, Brian, 62 and Jane, 58, nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.