Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The question at Newcastle Grammar School on Tuesday came from the Port Stephens police commander, Superintendent Chris Craner.
It was something Tom Finlay, a boy in year seven with autism, had asked himself.
Earlier this month Tom, 13, had watched from his school’s playground as the funeral procession for Sergeant Geoffrey Richardson, who had died in a crash on his way to an emergency, wound its way into Christ Church Cathedral.
Tom sat and wrote a poem.
“I’d just been thinking how people go to work every day, and how not everyone comes home,” he said.
“So I just wrote it.”
When Tom’s mother Michelle posted his The Great Knights of Port Stephens on social media, it got back to the police mourning one of their own.
In the superintendent’s words, “there were tears in the station”.
Some of the officers who read Tom’s poem – and the poems penned by his classmates, at the suggestion of their teacher Jordan Grant – attended Tuesday’s school assembly to express their thanks.
Outside, Senior Constable David Wynne from the dog squad introduced students to an as-yet unnamed pup being trained as a police dog, and the bravery award-winning German shepherd Ulrich demonstrated how to follow a scent.
Supt Craner said “carloads of cops” had wanted to visit the school, and he thanked Tom personally.
Shane Finlay said he was “amazed at how far” his son had come in his studies and social interactions with the help of his teachers at Newcastle Grammar and his previous teachers at the Aspect Hunter School for students with autism.
“The [autism] spectrum is wide, and in the last four years he’s really come on,” Mr Finlay said.
“I mean, he wrote that poem in 20 minutes.”
His mother Michelle Finlay added, “everything he does blows us away”.
About 1000 mourners, including NSW Governor David Hurley and Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, attended the funeral earlier this month of Sergeant Richardson, who died aged 43.
Sgt Richardson is survived by his police officer wife Senior Constable Margaret King and their two young sons Patrick and Aiden.
