A former journalist who met sports stars including Muhammad Ali and Freddie Trueman worked for both Oxford and Cambridge evening newspapers.
Michael Edward Finnis, often known as Mike, was born on October 10, 1946.
He was brought up in his beloved Suffolk in a loving family with three brothers and two sisters.
He enjoyed sports and while he was at Newmarket Grammar School he was the Suffolk schools cross country champion.
He played for many football and cricket teams.
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He was recently inducted into the Mildenhall Cricket Hall of Fame because in the 1967 season he snared 143 wickets - a record that remains today.
Mike Finnis in the Oxford newsroom
Straight out of school he became a trainee reporter for the business section of the Cambridge Evening News.
He soon moved into the sports department because as he said “sport is my hobby as well as my career”.
He worked his way up to become sports editor in 1980.
During his time with the paper he covered many interesting sports events but the highlights for him must have been meeting Muhammad Ali and watching him fight Joe Bugner in Las Vegas, meeting Freddie Trueman, the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, and following boxer Dave Boy Green’s career.
He left the Cambridge Evening News in 1996 and moved to Didcot to work for the Baptist Times as the news editor.
Then from 2002 he spent his last journalistic years as a sub-editor at the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times newspaper group.
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He also umpired the cricket games that the Oxford newsroom team played in. He retired in 2011.
Mr Finnis viewed journalism as a vocation as he said he always “had a hankering after the truth.”
He was involved in The Boys’ Brigade throughout his life and at a Boys’ Brigade camp, aged 16 he became a Christian and got baptised a year later.
He worked tirelessly in many roles for church and different organisations right up to his death such as the Oxfordshire Association for the Blind.
He would always help people in any way he could.
He died suddenly from a heart attack on Monday August 10. He was 73.
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A newspaper man to the end, he had his paper open next to him. He leaves his much-loved wife Vera. They had been married 48 years.
He also leaves their four children, Steve, Beth, Laura and Luke as well as his grandchildren Joseph, Imogen and Olivia who delighted in being with him.
Mr Finnis’s family said it felt “privileged to have had him in their lives and have memories of a generous, happy, supportive and kind man.”
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