A longtime reporter for the Suffolk News-Herald and Virginian-Pilot died on Feb. 9.

Linda McNatt, 70, got her start in journalism in the early 1980s at the Suffolk News-Herald. Carole Maguire O’Keeffe, who was editor at the time, remembered hiring her.

“She really wanted to be a reporter,” O’Keeffe said, recalling that McNatt wrote some stories on a spec basis and submitted them. “I could see that she could write, so we hired her. She turned out to be a really good reporter.”

McNatt went on to have a career in journalism that spanned parts of four decades. She worked at the Pilot for at least 24 years, according to a story published this week.

While she covered a variety of stories, her favorite beat was agriculture.

“She loved agriculture, reporting and talking to the farmers,” said her son, Wes McNatt.

“She liked anything agricultural and historical, and that showed up later in her work,” said her daughter, Sunny McNatt. “It got to be all about farms, and then it was Rebel flags.”

But McNatt shined in many different types of stories, Wes McNatt said.

“She did a story one time for a traveling circus, and she got to ride the elephant,” he recalled. “There was so many. She loved the stories; she loved the history of Suffolk.”

McNatt’s genuine love of people motivated her.

“She always had a love of people,” O’Keeffe said. “She cared about the people she interviewed, and they seemed to like her, too, because she was a genuine person. There were no airs about Linda. She told it like it was to everybody.”

“She wasn’t a very judgmental person,” Wes McNatt added. “She took people for who they were.”

McNatt was a great mother as well as reporter, her children said.

“She was a great mom and a great friend,” Wes McNatt said. “I got to go on a lot of stories with her. She was more than a mom to me. She was pretty much my best friend. It was awesome being able to have a mom you could be so close with. She was just easy to talk to.”

Linda McNatt also has another daughter, Kari.

A service will be held Saturday at 2 p.m. at R.W. Baker and Co. Funeral Home and Crematory, 509 W. Washington St.