July 2002 Volume 83 Number 7 "serving the protectors"
Third-generation cops
By Brett Williams

Members of the Patterson clan have been turning up for service on the thin blue line since 1938. The family’s latest recruits, brothers Nick and Stuart, kept that proud tradition alive when they graduated from Fort Largs early this year.

The pair now represents the third consecutive generation of Pattersons to take on police careers. And each has, with his new police-officer status, been a source of overwhelming pride to his father, Chris, and grandmother, Rotha.

“It’s just a wonderful thing for the family,” says Chris, a former detective senior sergeant and now lawyer, who served 34 years on the force. “They will make good policemen because they’re well educated, intelligent and have been blessed with a great deal of common sense.”

But neither Nick nor Stuart ever knew the man with whom the tradition began – his grandfather, Ivan. After a 38-year career, and at the age of just 53, he died as a serving officer in 1976.

He had become a detective in the late-1950s, after several years’ service in Ballistics. A superintendent when he died, Ivan had received a mention for his part in the Sundown murder investigation in 1958.

His widow, Rotha, remembers him as a supremely calm, no-nonsense man who enjoyed his work. As she watched Nick graduate from course 38 in February and Stuart from course 39 in March, she wished Ivan had been able to see them.

“He would probably have said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful to see them’, because he never saw any grandchildren,” she laments.

Once a police wife and mother – and now grandmother – Rotha has been associated with policing for 60 years. She first met Ivan at a ballroom dance he attended with his fellow cadets in 1942, and married him two years later.

Her son, Chris, had, as a schoolboy, shown an interest in a teaching career. At the age of 16, however, he told his parents he was joining the police force and signed on in 1964. He retired in 1998, but went on to pursue a legal career in Adelaide.

“I’ve found it interesting – very different from what it is at the academy.”

Rotha says living her life so closely connected with police work was “never ever a hassle”. “It was a wonderful feeling,” she says, “because I always felt that I had security.”

Even today, at the age of 80, she maintains a strong involvement with policing. She is a member of the Retired Police Officers Association, the Police Historical Society and Police Legacy. She also serves on the commissioned police officers’ mess committee, on which she was the first woman ever to win a place.

Meanwhile, the two police officer grandsons, of whom she is so intensely proud, continue to work through their probations. Both had been working as bar managers before they joined SAPOL, and each was attracted to what he saw as “variety” in police work.

Stationed at Port Adelaide LSA, Stuart has worked in the police station, on patrols and in the cells. He has so far found police life “magnificent”. “I’m having fun doing the things I do,” he says, “and I get stuck into it.”

Nick – attached to Hindley St police station – has also enjoyed his work since he graduated. He has spent most of his time assigned to patrols. “I’ve found it interesting,” he says, “very different from what it is at the academy.”

Both take great pride in their family’s police history and say it played some part in their decisions to join the force. Their exposure to the police culture from their early childhoods, and knowing police officers as family friends, also influenced them.

Each has shown an interest in later pursuing detective work, as did his father and grandfather. But will their combined careers add another 70-odd years’ police service to the family record?

Stuart expects to stay in policing for at least “a good portion” of his working life. But he adds that, if he one day felt a need to “do something different”, he would consider an alternative.

Says Nick: “At the moment, I intend for it to be a career. I’ll probably keep studying all the way through.”

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