By RUSSELL BENNETT
IF it happens to someone you know, it can definitely happen to someone you love.
I haven’t had a conversation with Liam Davison in about seven years, but I was thinking about him the other day, and a number of other teachers, tutors and lecturers who have had an impact on me along the way.
What are they up to now? Who are they helping to inspire next?
Liam was one of the 37 Australians killed on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. His wife Francesca ’Frankie’ was another.
I didn’t know Liam well outside of my time at Frankston’s Chisholm campus, where I did the first year of my professional writing and editing diploma.
But learning in such a hands-on environment, I’m convinced, made relationships spawned back then so much more powerful.
Liam – an award-winning novelist – taught creative writing, which often doesn’t – and at times shouldn’t – go hand-in-hand with journalism.
But what he also taught me was an ability to think outside the square and to be able to put it into words.
Yet I’m lost for them when I try to wrap my head around what happened in the sky above eastern Ukraine last Friday.
That Boeing 777 was full of people who made it their life’s mission to help others – whether they be teachers, students studying science or medicine, or delegates on the way to an AIDS conference.
Liam didn’t just influence me – he had an effect on the lives of many of my friends – photographers, screenwriters, children’s book publishers, film makers – the lot of us.
Most of us found out that Liam and Frankie were on board MH17 through a Facebook post than I’m sure left everyone else as gobsmacked as I was.
And it was through that post that we were truly able to realise just how many people his, and Frankie’s, deaths affected.
Like most others, I’m sure, I couldn’t help but think of my own family and how I lucky I was to have them safe and sound.
Liam and Frankie are survived by two children in their 20s – Milly and Sam.
Liam was 56, Frankie 54.
