This weeks column. Rest in Peace 842. “The fire service must be, by its very nature, an inherently noble endeavor. For this reason, you will be held to a higher standard. You must expect more of yourself, and more of your brothers. If you do not believe this, you are in the wrong place. You will be asked to deal with people on the worst day of their lives. They may be injured, distraught, frightened, and vulnerable. Yours is the face they will remember - maybe the last face they will ever see. You may summon courage. You may garner wisdom. And you may hone your craft. But, if within your heart you are not noble – if you are not righteous – you will have failed.” It has been many years since I penned these rather idealistic words and tucked them inside the front cover of my ‘Essentials of Firefighting – Instructors Manual’. They are committed to memory and I have recited them often - I’m sure too often for many of my fellow firefighters. I will be manning the fire station on Saturday afternoon while Lt. Mickey Belew is laid to rest – a task I am honored to bear. Mickey and I were not close friends. I knew him primarily from accident scenes and the occasional fire, just a handful of brief conversations on the side of the road. It is the same unique relationship I have with many area firefighters, a roadside brotherhood that outsiders would never understand. Mickey and I were about the same age – both family men with three children. It is an age where I find myself becoming increasingly reflective, a time when fewer and fewer things have become more and more important. It was with this in mind that I pulled out my old ‘Essentials’ book and unfolded the yellowed piece of paper with my own handwritten note. I wrote the aforementioned words in my late twenties, reflecting on a particular traffic accident several years prior. It is not that I find my own words especially profound or inspirational, but that even as I struggled privately in my own life - I always believed them. There was an inherent goodness to what we were doing, even as I grappled with my own. It was my first lesson in the ‘other’ reason we serve. It wasn’t the most horrific accident scene I had been on, but the unimaginable violence that results when two vehicles collide at high speed had left a nine year old boy dead in the front passenger seat. The pickup that broadsided the old Chrysler Cordoba in northern Weld County, Colorado had left a thirty inch intrusion between the axles on the passenger side. The little boy’s seriously injured mother sat on the ground, leaning against the driver’s door. His two year old sister, standing in the back seat when the vehicles collided, remained standing with the seat wrapped so tightly around her that it was slowly stealing her ability to breathe. The old Chrysler was a product of Detroit’s glory days, with enough steel in it to make a dozen cars today. We quickly peeled the top off of the car, but as the adrenaline wore off and our arms got heavy it maintained its stubborn grip. As the extrication process drug on, I found myself with the unenviable task of kneeling over a dead child in the front seat while trying to hold another upright and keep oxygen on her so she might make use of what little air she was getting. Though we struggled frantically to free her, we weren’t naïve. We knew that as soon as we relieved the pressure from her tiny body, she would probably bleed out internally. I found myself studying her bloody blond curls and trying desperately to hide the hopelessness in my own eyes. I thought about my young son at home and finding myself at a loss for words I began quietly humming the theme song to ‘Barney’, perhaps hoping that this little girl and I might find a quiet place among the chaos. And then I heard a voice. I looked down to see Bob Winter, the gray haired ‘old man’ of the crew, trying desperately to reposition a hydraulic ram in the rear floorboard, all the while whispering softly to a child he’d never met: “It’s going to be ok Honey, PawPaw is here. We’ll have you out of here in just a minute, Baby. PawPaw is here.” Even as his hands worked frantically, he calmly reassured her, “PawPaw is here, Honey. PawPaw is still here.” Over two decades have passed and I expect that little girl is grown and might even have children of her own now (I think her name was Becky). Many of the men of the Windsor-Severance Fire Protection District have remained lifelong friends. Bob and I locked horns a time or two over the years, just the inevitable collision of youthful enthusiasm with tradition and experience. But even twenty years later I can assure you that little blond haired girl and I have one thing in common - we are both damned glad PawPaw was there. I’ll be in the station Saturday when hundreds of firefighters gather in Dublin to bid farewell to a fallen Brother. In his honor, I ask that we remind one another of the inherent goodness in what we do – expect it of one another. And remember, sometimes all you can do is just ‘be there’. Be there for Mickey’s family. Be there for each other. Rest in Peace 842. You can coast on in 10-40. You can kill the lights. You can silence the horns. We’ll be here. jonkoonsman@yahoo
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:31:28 +0000
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