NEWS last week of three very different and heartbreakingly high-profile deaths has brought very different reactions from the community.
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Australians everywhere stopped to reflect on the life of former Test cricketer and commentator Richie Benaud, who died at the age of 84 after a battle with skin cancer.
Benaud was described as not only the voice of summer, but also a gentle man and a gentleman who brought so much to the game of cricket.
As cricket said goodbye to one of its finest, the community of Leeton was mourning one of its own.
Popular teacher Stephanie Scott was murdered just a week before her wedding and she is now being remembered by family, friends and the students of Leeton High School, where she taught.
Police investigating her death are to be commended for progressing their inquiries to the point they have been able to make an arrest and lay charges, but the thoughts of most of us remain with Ms Scott’s family and her fiancé Aaron Leeson-Woolley.
I hope Ms Scott’s family and friends are able to draw some small comfort from the support they have around them as they mourn the popular 26-year-old.
Our thoughts must also go to another extended family – that of four-year-old Chloe Valentine – as an inquest into the child’s death catalogued the errors that saw Families SA leave the child with her mother despite the pleas of the little girl’s grandparents and others.
The South Australian government has said it fully supports 19 of the 21 recommendations of coroner Mark Johns who investigated the death of Chloe, who died after repeatedly crashing a motorbike she was forced to ride by her mother and her mother’s then-partner.
Families SA never removed Chloe from her mother’s care despite knowledge of long-term neglect.
On the face of it, these three deaths appear to have very little in common, except for one thing: All three – Benaud, Ms Scott and little Chloe – are being remembered and mourned.
Beyond the headlines, they were people who were loved and whose families and friends are going to need support as they come to terms with their losses.
- Jody Springett