To the one who responds when others state a need, we know the gravity that pulls us. When the siren blares, the bell rings, or the switch is pulled, we mount up and go without a thought. It is in the blood of the one who answers the call, for it is the very fiber of his existence.
For them, I wish to share a story. This is not some dramatic screenplay written by some fanciful Hollywood writer. This was real blood. This was real sweat. In the end, this was real tears.
When you see a fire truck screaming down a street, know the people mounted upon it are exuberant. Rare is it when man can follow his passion and answer his true call, but know they are. Their minds switch from men and women being humans to souls on mission for which they were born. Things happen automatically, each mind giving way to a response born by countless hours of training. Each heart steels itself to the task it has been called to do, each piece knowing its part in the puzzle. While they know the people who have called them may be in great peril, they are ready for the task ahead and prepared to give it their all to save even one life in need.
That is what happened on July 4, 2002. A raging house fire. Kids trapped. Firefighters on the scene, ready to give their all.
While the intricacies of the job are many, and the hazards faced changing by the minute, what remained steady was the heart of determination of the men and women who were there. While the sirens blared the evacuation orders, men begrudgingly surrendered hope of fully answering the call that shouted from deep within. Nothing stirs the hearts of the responder more than knowing a life hangs in the balance of effort they were born to do. Something primordial challenges them, something from outside the realm of mind and body begs them onward. Onward they will go.
Some of them who gathered on that night decided they were not ready to quit. As a group they went to the incident commander and begged for one more chance. There were kids in there. There could still be hope. One more chance, it’s all we need.
The chief gave in. Some would say he gave into their pressure. I say he surrendered to the voice inside of him, the one he shared with those under his command.
One more chance.
They went in. Eleven of them. Through the flames and falling remnants of what was once a home, they charged forward. The rage of a mission greater than self must have welled up within them. Flames nor heat nor danger of the night would stop them. Their training must have told them they were in great peril and that their situation was helpless, yet the voice convinced them that they had more time. Up they went, searching, until finally it came time to acknowledge the impossibility that anything without an air pack and gear could survive there and that even with the tools of their trade, their survival was handing by a thread.
Or a few nails driven by a hammer decades before. Sometimes the very essence of life hangs by just a few strands of aged steel. Sometimes, that steel simply cannot bear the weight.
The house came down, eleven brave souls still inside along with the three children they were hell-bent on saving. In an instance the hopes and dreams of many collapsed and floated away like red-hot embers in a summer wind. Immediately, the one soul of a brotherhood sprung to life, and what was once a futile effort to save others became a desperate effort to save itself.
Rescuers dug in, giving their all to save those trapped in the debris. Desperation invaded the space within the minds of those steeled to danger, and fatigue became irrelevant to the cause. Soon, either brave souls were saved, and three were gone to destiny.
Men die for various reasons. These three would die in service of others. They would die to set a standard for the rest of us to follow. When the chips were down and the mission seemed impossible, we simply ask for one more chance. When the flames of life become too intense and others call our name, we ask for one more chance to help them. When the structures fall and the burning ash betrays our greatest weaknesses, we stand up for one more chance. When we stumble, and fall, we rise to look the beast in our minds right in the heart and say, we have one more chance. And when our final bell rings, we hear the truth vibrate in the very song echoing in our hearts.
Take that one more chance.
I don’t write this as much as an honor to them as to give you a chance to honor them. You likely have never heard their names, and I bet they’d agree their names are not important . What is important is the that one more chance they have to inspire others to some semblance of greatness, some ideation of what makes us all wonderful potentialities. What do we do with our one more chance? What do we do to honor the greatness we were born with?
As you read their names, know that I knew them. They seemed rather ordinary in life, doing great things with the hearts they were blessed with in a brotherhood filled with extraordinarily ordinary men and women. What makes these men extraordinary is that when the opportunity came to shrink from their calling, they refused. When the order came to evacuate, they protested. When the knowledge that three young lives had even the tiniest thread of hope still there, they went back in. They used that one more chance to rise above the ordinary, and show us all what is possible.
They were awakened in the middle of the night by a calling, and they rest in an eternal answering of that call.
Deputy Chief John West
Chief Jim Sylvester
Firefighter Thomas Stewart