Oct 2000 Volume 81 Number 10 "serving the protectors"

Two Great Families

Children’s innocent questions can break the hardest hearts. Could a parent be faced with anything more heartbreaking than a seriously ill child asking: “Will I live?”

SA police officers, Chris and Dianne Reynolds - featured in Will I Live, Mum? - have faced precisely that dilemma. But they have - for 12 months now - coped with all manner of trauma associated with their daughter Amy’s illness.

While lovingly caring for Amy, they have continued to raise their two other children, Sam and Georgia, run the family home and hold down exacting jobs as police officers.

Of many police officers’ acts of bravery and selflessness - rightly highlighted in this column over time - few could be deemed more courageous than the Reynolds’.

Fortunately, their fellow cops never left them to struggle entirely alone. In its usual manner, the police family has played a helping role throughout the Reynolds’ crushing ordeal.

Chris and Dianne felt well supported through the efforts of Bluey Day and other organizations; and those in their workplaces - who simply enquired about Amy’s progress - gave great comfort.

They must now move on with a measure of uncertainty attached to their future. But none within the police family is likely to allow them that journey without further support.

The Police Journal wishes Amy a quick return to good health and every success for her future, and congratulates her parents on their guts and commitment.

...and The Family At Work In NT

Already more than a year has passed since the tragic shooting death of Northern Territory police sergeant, Glen Huitson (Police Death in the Territory - The Grieving Continues, Police Journal, October 1999).

After an hours-long shooting rampage, Huitson was shot dead near the Stuart Highway and Old Bynoe Road junction south of Darwin.

His killer, Rodney Ansell, was said to be the man on whom Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee character was based. Huitson was 38 and a husband and father of two.

But in another example of police family care, some of Huitson’s former NT colleagues recently set out to erect a memorial stone in honour of their fallen mate. In their own time, they won financial support from local business and approval from local government for the land on which the stone now rests.

They also cleared, concreted and laid gravel on the memorial site, which lies only metres from the scene of Huitson’s death.

Clearly, no support in the wider community could ever match that administered by the police family.

PASAweb   Index & Search   Top of Page   Comments   Email to Editor

The Police Journal Online is an official publication of the Police Association of South Australia and is published monthly. Editors of kindred publications can seek permission from the Editor to re-publish any Police Journal Online article. Copyright 2000  The Police Association of South Australia sustance