BY BILL MANNING
We enter the new millennium with heavy hearts. We enter a New Age to the sounds of collapsing buildings and roaring flames, of maydays and mayhem, to the taste of tears for our six brothers from Worcester.
One vacant building. Six fallen firefighters.
We pray for Lieutenant Thomas Spencer, Firefighter Timothy Jackson, Firefighter James Lyons, Firefighter Joseph McGuirk, Firefighter Paul Brotherton, and Firefighter Jeremiah Lucey.
One vacant building. We pray for their families. Five widows. Seventeen children without fathers.
We pray for a city that never will be the same.
And for a fire service that never will be the same.
We enter the new millennium with the painful knowledge that buildings will claim the lives of firefighters-individually, in pairs, in groups-as it has for many years.
More than 100 firefighters died in the line of duty in 1999, leaving many broken hearts behind.
We honor our fallen firefighters with emotional memorial services and funerals. We travel from near and far to show solidarity and remind ourselves that the fire service truly is a family. We honor the fallen for living how we want to live, motivated by duty and self-sacrifice, the two guiding principles of this great fire service. Memorial services are as much for the living as they honor the dead.
But now that the six fallen brothers from Worcester are buried, we are left with a persistent question. In death, how do they speak to us? What do they tell us? That must be answered. To truly and completely honor these heroes is to take their message to heart and embark on a new course that benefits the living.
What do they speak to us? What do they say?
I can only speak for myself. For me, they say:
You, Mr. or Ms. Public Official, whoever and wherever you are, you who shower on us such eloquence in death, where were you when we were alive? Where were you, you who claim to understand our fire service family, when we brought our needs before you but your politics shut us out?
All along, we wanted your actions, not your words.
All along, while we were risking our lives day in and day out, while we searched in the black smoke and inched our way down the long, hot hallways, you were so far away from us; yet when we fell, you sought to be near us.
We knew that every call could be our final call, but you didn’t feel that significance when we asked for your help.
We lived under the threat of vacant buildings for years. Our brothers and sisters still do. We strongly suspected that there were lives in danger in that cold storage warehouse, and we did what we had to do-we went in. We were bound to do so. And we paid the price.
Was it worth it? Are the taxes you collect over the years from neglected, abandoned buildings worth the price to us?
It is time to remove dangerous, vacant structures from our communities.
The cries of our loved ones echo through eternity.
You can build a new building. You can never bring us back to our children. They are crying still.
Mr. Public Official, your words vaporize into nothingness. But your actions live on. You must help to create a more fire-safe America. Start with vacant buildings-while you still have them on your mind.
Remember Vandome, Waldbaums, Hackensack Ford, Mary Pang-they exist in every community. Aggressively support the F.I.R.E. Act and begin to support, in real ways, the needs of the people who are the backbone of every community.
Mr. Public Official, listen to us.
For me, the six fallen brothers say:
Local and national fire service leaders, remember who you are, remember where you came from. Remember the men and women on the front lines-they cannot do it without you. Keep them foremost on your minds when it comes time for your decisions on where you want to take this fire service. Help lead them to a New Age in the American fire service, one that affords them the support they deserve. Create and support initiatives that will remove the vacant building problem in America.
And for me, the six fallen brothers say:
You, my brother and sister firefighters, I love you now as I did then. Carry on your great mission, carry on your great works. Heroism is manifested every day, in works small and large, in the persistence with which you undertake your selfless mission, in whatever capacity you find yourselves. Reach out beyond your station, into your streets and beyond, and dream a dream that will encompass all, that will make a new fire service, a fire service that will preserve its mission yet never have to relive the same tragedies, over and over again, for which you now shed your tears. See the new road that stretches out before you; take it.
Do it for our children. For all children.
Remember us.
How do the fallen brothers speak to you, and what are you going to do about it?
