This is a page I am starting to present my thoughts and feelings on my experience in the fire service over the past 18 years. I am Brian, firefighter/paramedic, son of a fire chief, a father, a friend, and part of a familyhood. My colleagues often talk about a brotherhood but it’s much more than that. While our profession is a tight knit group at the station and saving each others butts on scene, our families are just as involved. It started with me on the station grounds watching my dad practice for the state fireman’s convention. The guys would practice competition events after coming home from their full time jobs. Some were craftsmen. Some were laborers. Some owned their own business. My dad, he was a postal worker. So after walking 12 miles a day he would come home to go to the firehouse with his other “family.” Out there in front of that firehouse, in our small one stop light town, I watched these men race towards the fire hydrant and drop hose in the streets as fast as a lightening. Focused on the task each was given during the practice, their faces wore the passion of the “job.” This job didn’t put food on the table. Or put gas in our beater car. This job was from the heart. Volunteering to run into a burning house to save strangers has to come from the heart. This job created a familyhood. Tradition is tossed around a firehouse quite frequently. My profession would not have tradition if it were not for families and generations continuing the passion exhibited by those volunteers I idolized as a kid. I don’t remember my first date or my first honeymoon, but I remember the familyhood those early years with the “guys from the firehouse.” They looked after me and my sister. This is why it’s not just a brotherhood to me.
When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work. ~Chief Edward Croker, FDNY